Instead of Revamping Hubble, Replace It

Neil Halelamien writes "Astronomy Magazine reports that an international team of astronomers has proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or human repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe, reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build, less than the estimated cost of a service mission."

Comments

Re:By the way...

[mz001b]

Can we get this lens right the first time, too? :)

it was a problem with the mirror -- no lens

Re:Good idea

[nuclear305]

" Except we lost the only shuttle that could get it up there."

Except had you read the article you would have noticed the plan would use an Atlas 521 rocket to put it in orbit instead of a shuttle

$1 billion is cost of both building and launching

[FleaPlus]

I submitted the story, and because of some sloppy wording on my part a number of people now think that the $1 billion doesn't include the cost of launching the rocket. In actuality, it does include this cost already.

From their poster, here are the figures which go into the cost estimate (written as low/high estimate):

Spacecraft: $135M/$165M
Observatory ATLO: $80M/$100M
Deorbit Module: $5M/$10M
Optical Telescope Assembly: $150M/$210M
SI Mods: $20M/$30M
SI Integration: $5M/$10M
FGS: $30M/$55M
Fee: $64M/$87M
Contingency: $128M/$174M
Launch Vehicle: $130M/$150M

Total: $747M/$991M

Again, my apologies for wording my submission poorly.

Re:Are you all CLUELESS!!!!???

[mbrother]

I was going to post something similar to this.

I'll add that the James Webb Telescope will work at longer wavelengths than Hubble, and will not duplicate Hubble's UV capability. In that sense, I would support the proposed Hubble "copy" that would fly the to-be-orphaned new Hubble Instruments, especially as seeing as how there's no ultraviolet spectroscopic capability in the near term.

I suspect this idea is dead in the water given where James Webb Space Telescope is at the moment. It is viewed by Washington and most of the astronomical community as Hubble's replacement, and attempts to propose new ultraviolet telescopes to advance Hubble's current science have not fared well.

Re:America's retreat from knowledge?

[Seenhere]

How can you say that the Bush administration is retreating from knowledge when he: a) DOUBLED the budget for the National Science Foundation.

For one thing, the doubling was supposed to happen over 5 years. It certainly hasn't doubled yet, and in fact it certainly won't.

Quite the contrary. The FY 2005 NSF budget for research and related activities is being cut by .7% from its FY 2004 level, the first such cut in many years. The other main part of the NSF budget, that devoted to education, is being cut even more. The "doubling" bill is now very much no longer operative.

The rational conclusion is that Bush just isn't serious about this.