NASA Announces De-Orbit Mission For Hubble

maglor_83 writes "NASA has announced the end for Hubble. It plans on performing a "robotic de-orbit mission", and apparently its not due to the monetary costs associated with fixing it, but rather the risks involved. NASA's new goals are now manned missions to the moon, as a platform for Mars."

Comments

When?

[Odo]

When do they intend to deorbit Hubble? As I understand it, the first thing expected to die on Hubble are the gyroscopes. One needs three gyros to point the scope at a celestial target. The deorbit module will definitely have its own pointing system (used for docking, among other things). Which means the mere presence of the deorbit module would fix Hubble. So what's their criteria for dropping Hubble into the Pacific?

Re:Scientific payoff

[drinkypoo]

The moon would be a good place for a prototype space elevator. If it turns out to be a good source for Helium-3, AND we turn out to have a good use for Helium-3, then the moon may be otherwise useful. Mars, on the other hand, offers us the opportunity to do scientific research that simply isn't possible any way other than landing on another planet, and Mars is the most earthlike of planets around (sad as that is) and may have been significantly more earthlike in the past. It's worth going there. As for measurable, immediate scientific benefits, you have to look further than the end of your own nose if you're going to learn anything, and you have to look further than the end of this week if you want to help humanity.

This makes utterly no sense.

[Cutriss]

So, sending a team of astronauts into space just over 600km away, still within the confines of the Van Allen belts, is terribly dangerous, but sending them out a minimum of 55M kilometres is safer?

This sort of mission was almost *routine* three years ago...and now it's "too risky". Those NASA people sure have turned into wusses. >.>

Re:This makes utterly no sense.

[TheGavster]

I want to know why the moon landing is slated for 2015-2020, while the last time we did it a) not really knowing how to do it and b) in like half the time. Repeating a past mission with modern tech should not be this difficult.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zocalo]

Actually, apart from using it as a shield against EM interference coming from Earth, there's not all that much to be gained from sticking a radio telescope on the moon. You'd have to either make it small enough to land intact, or build the thing in-situ as well, plus you'd have to relay any data around the moon, most likely via a satellite unless you want a second base station and someone laying a lot of fibre...

A better idea would be to build two orbiting radio telescopes in Earth's orbital path, on opposite sides of the sun and with the same orbital velocity as that of Earth. This essentially fixes the Earth and the two telescopes in place relative to each other and keeps line of sight communications between Earth and each of the satellites at all times. Massage the resultant data together via the wonders of very long baseline interferometry and you effectively have an single radio telescope the diameter of Earth's orbit.

A tragic end to a great piece of work.

[Rimbo]

Hubble was one of the first casualties of the Challenger explosion. Remember that the first thing that needed to be fixed was a flawed mirror?

While I was in undergrad at UT, I was an officer in the local SEDS chapter, where Dr. Hans Mark explained that the mirror was known to be flawed before it was launched. When the Challenger exploded, NASA shut down everything. Hubble remained, unrepaired, in a dark warehouse somewhere. When they got the HST program back up and running, they'd long forgotten their problem with the mirror.

HST was a great idea, but there were some big screwups attached to it.

A long, sad night...

[mbrother]

I really thought we could keep Hubble going until the James Webb Telescope goes up. Guess not. The proposal I just put in last month might be my last chance to do a new Hubble project (failure is expected for 2007, but could be sooner, or a little later). I've got some grant money to hire a postdoc, and one of my friends who currently works at Space Telescope is going to call me about it tomorrow. He says morale there is awful, and many are looking for outs. They'll be running James Webb, too, so there will be things to do, but still...