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

Scientific payoff

[BWJones]

OK....... I cannot see what the near term scientific benefit is of sending folks to Mars. Hubble? Hell yeah. The moon? Absolutely, .......but Mars? Look, Hubble has generated more scientific data per dollar than just about any other NASA program as well as helped out more than one project in the defense department and fed data to scientists and scientific organizations world wide. A return to the moon, could certainly function as a refueling point for unmanned missions to other planetary and stellar objects, as well as functioning as a potential resource for mining (with a space elevator which would facilitate this), and a remote optical and radio telescope on the moon could be an extraordinary scientific resource, but I am not sure the payoff of killing Hubble in favor of manned missions to Mars are currently worth it. I would much rather see more investment in sophisticated ground and space based "scopes".

Given current technology, I see a manned mission to mars as a financial boondogle.

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.

Re:Scientific payoff

[drinkypoo]

Part of the scientific process that often goes overlooked is that when you are trying to solve one problem, you often solve other problems that lie along the way, and sometimes you make accidental discoveries that lead to developments that you never thought might be related. Thus, science for science's sake is generally a far more useful [and maybe even noble] pursuit than most of the other things we do.

Consequently, you really have no idea what kind of bang for the buck will be produced by, comparatively, setting up shop on the moon, and setting up shop on Mars.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Anonymous Coward]

Given current technology, I see a manned mission to mars as a financial boondogle.

This is why we go to the moon first. Of course we can't do it with current technology, and if we keep sending up robots, without the incentive to develop better and faster propulsion, etc., that's all we'll ever have - current technology.

Get people up to Mars successfully, and we won't waste any more missions because of stupid "convert to metric" errors and the like that have doomed most of the robotic Mars missions to date.

No more sending up a robot, finding a tantalizing piece of data, and then waiting 5+ years to get the next round of questions answered. This is tedious and silly! Put PEOPLE on the ground with the right equipment for a year, and your precious "science" will start to ROLL in instead of TRICKLING in like it does now!

(sheesh!)

Step 1: Moon base.
Step 2: Build the next generation of spacecraft on the moon
Step 3: Launch Mars mission from the moon, where the gravity well is shallower.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Zeinfeld]

Part of the scientific process that often goes overlooked is that when you are trying to solve one problem, you often solve other problems that lie along the way, and sometimes you make accidental discoveries that lead to developments that you never thought might be related. Thus, science for science's sake is generally a far more useful [and maybe even noble] pursuit than most of the other things we do.

This is trotted out every time that the space program needs justifying and guess what, its bogus. Non stick frying pans were being developed during the Napoleonic wars when the English embargo prevented the French getting their hands on enough cooking grease. Hence LeCreuset.

It gets even wobblier when you get to the old CERN home of the Web stuff. The folk who go on about that don't mention that CERN never assigned any staff to the Web project directly other than Tim during the time Tim was at CERN. There were three students who worked with Tim and another four people from another group who did the Web because they beleived in it. When it came to setting up the Web consortium the CERN director sent to bat for the Web project EU grant wise told the committee that the priority at CERN was physics and the Web was not considered important.

Even when you get to communications satelites the story is somewhat murky. Most satelites are being launched by the French or the Chinese and NASA has done its best to make use of those facilities as hard as possible.

If you want to research networking then give money to networking, if you want to research biochemistry give the money to biochemists. Do not give the money to a bunch of astrophyscists in the hope that they will solve your networking, fusion, and life sciences problems in their spare time. It does not work that way. The only way you can see a return on 'spinoff' research is if you have programs in place to identify and invest in them. NASA ditched all that years ago and there is zero chance of picking any of it up in the current budget cut environment.

There is no way that shutting down Hubble and spending the money on the space station is going to get even 1% of the science that Hubble has delivered already. The basic problem here is that NASA sees its mission as manned space exploration and that has very little to do with science.

There is one solution to the problem that has not been discussed much. There were two mirrors made, the bent one that is up there today and the reserve that was made (corectly) by Kodak for testing purposes. The Kodak mirror must still be in storage somewhere, there are duplicates of pretty much all the equipment. the parts could probably be bolted together to make a duplicate for $50 million or even less. The French, Russians and Chinese would probably put it into orbit for $50 million at commercial rates and given the cargo it could probably be done at no cost in return for telescope time.

The cost of Hubble is almost all in the design. Making a duplicate should be much, much cheaper.

Re:Scientific payoff

[Anonymous Coward]

assuming this back-of-the-envelope calculation is right.

It might be in itself, but you're forgetting something important: Lagrange points. The link below explains how a lunar space elevator can be done.

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/lunar_spac e_elevator.html

Not only would it be possible, the entire cable could weigh just 6,800 kg according to the article's calculations.

(It's been a slashdot story, but the usual searches wouldn't find it)

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?

It's not the end.

[Hrodvitnir]

Honestly, all this uproar over downing Hubble is a bit dramatic. It's not the end of space research. We'll keep sending up satellites and they'll keep getting better. There's just going to be a hole fore a few years where we won't get the type of data that hubble was able to provide.

We will put up a satellite to replace the Hubble. Space isn't going anywhere.

It's official...

[rasafras]

NASA is dead. When you claim risk and safety as a high priority for exploration and scientific conquest, you know you aren't going to get anywhere. Lewis and Clark didn't wait for the invention of the SUV before going cross-country, they just went ahead and did it.
I'm not saying that exploration should cut corners and put people in unnecessary danger, but there are astronauts willing to risk going up to do things like this. Face it, shooting somebody into the sky on a giant bomb is inherently unsafe, and that's something you've just got to accept. I understand that another accident for NASA would cut approval and potentially cost them far more money, and I'm saying that that's the problem. Trying to be unnecessarily safe is going to cost them far too much money, and that's money that they most likely don't have and won't have to spend.
(I was referring to the Mars mission as well)

We're going to the Moon!

[TheOriginalRevdoc]

Yippee!

It's gonna be just the ISS. They'll spend billions designing amazing machines, the budget will be cut 50%, they'll redesign, the budget will be cut another 50%, they'll redesign again, then they'll put up a half-arsed end result that barely meets its mission requirements.

Then the astronauts will hang out on the moon, kicking rocks and wondering what the hell they're doing there. They'll do a trial collection of Helium 3, but there won't be any point, because there's no use for Helium 3, even if we could get it back to Earth.

Eventually, the engineers will admit publicly that getting to the moon doesn't contribute to getting to Mars in any meaningful way, but boy oh boy, the contractors sure made a shitload of cash off the project, didn't they?

And isn't that what American politics is all about?

Re:There is no deorbit module

[Odo]

> There is no robot to send up to bring it down. They want to be able to command it down [...] BTW my father worked on pointing and control on Hubble. I'm no expert, but I've spent many nights asking him a lot of questions about Hubble.

Oh man, you seriously need to have another chat with your dad. Hubble can point itself in any direction thanks to its gyros. But it doesn't have any engines. It couldn't deorbit itself if it wanted to. They have full control over where Hubble looks, but not where it goes. To deorbit Hubble you need a robotic deorbit module (aka a rocket).

For more information, see this page:

HUBBLE ROBOTIC VEHICLE DEORBIT MODULE (HRVDM)
Contract Award Date: DTD 092404
Contract Award Number: CNT NNG05EA01C
Contract Award Amount: AMT $330,578,914
Contractor: TO Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company

[Off topic] While Googling for the above I found this generated ad:

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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.