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Senator Calls on NASA to Service Hubble
Avantare writes "Senator Calls on NASA to Service Hubble
In a sternly worded letter to acting NASA Administrator Frederick D. Gregory, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said she expects the U.S. space agency to heed the will of the Congress and keep preparations for a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission on track.
Congress, in passing an omnibus spending bill late last year, directed NASA to set aside $291 million of its 2005 budget to spend planning and preparing for a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008. When NASA informed Congress just weeks later that it intended to spend only $175 million of that amount on the Hubble repair effort, some saw the move as an indication that the agency was preparing to abandon plans to service Hubble robotically and rely instead on a space shuttle crew to fix the telescope."
The problems is not that they are more dangrerous now. They have always been this dangerous. It is just that now the danger is better understood. Ignoring risk does not make it go away.
That said, I am not against using a manned (sorry, crewed) mission to repair the Hubble if that is the best option. In any case, the risks needed to be understood, reduced as much as possible and accepted or rejected; not just ignored.
Well, it's because Goddard is in Maryland, and nixing Hubble puts a lot of those workers out of jobs.
I believe that was summarized in one of the previous stories about Hubble on Slashdot.
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
I really like having Ms. Mikulski as senator, and I've voted for her each time she's been elected, but I should point out that the reason that she's pushing this isn't that she cares about getting hi-res pictures of aliens. The Space Telescope Science Institute is in Baltimore, MD, her home state, as well as NASA's Goddard facility.
That's what representatives of any sort do: they fight for their local interests. If they didn't do that, the voters would elect somebody who did. Unfortunately, without a fixed budget cap, that generally means deals of the form "You vote for my thing, so I'll vote for your thing, and the only one who loses is the guy who eventually has to pay off the debt."
So while I like Ms. Mikulski, and I support the "measly" few dozens of millions of dollars it would take to keep getting great science from Hubble, I thought a bit of disclosure would be appropriate.
You do know that NASA/Goddard is in Senator Mikulski backyard, right? Actually I'm not against her on this point, because it's my backyard too.
I think the "better option" that most astrophysicists are looking forward to is the James Webb Telescope. It's a primarily IR-telescope, but in terms of its mission statement it will largely replace what Hubble is doing now. Hubble has already survived longer than originally intended (due to many well-executed repair missions). More years could be squeezed out of Hubble with more repair missions, but if what you want is a brand-new telescope, the James Webb Telescope will keep astronomers busy for many years.
Probably been mentioned already, but a work-around for one of the major limiting factors for the Hubble's lifetime has already been found, that being the number of working gyroscopes available.
After repair, the telescope has six gyroscopes (used for pointing and stabilising the device, without any messy reaction mass involved), and it needed at least three to point accurately. There are currently only four working ones left - they're somewhat unreliable.
However, a way of pointing the telescope with just two working gyroscopes has been tested recently, which should extend the lifespan a little - possibly until 2008. I still doubt that a full-scale repair mission will be launched, but this might help in filling the gap until a replacement is finalised...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
The main problem with repairing hubble is the fact that ther is no longer any shuttle capable of containing it in it's hold as all the remaining shuttles are equipped for docking with the iss. so in order for the hubble to be repaired they would have to strip a shuttle so they can repair it (and lets not forget about taking along a spare set of solar panels.
"But doesnt it seem odd that Congress is meddling in NASA's affairs?"
No. Congress does the budget, congress does the taxes. They have the right to insist the money is spent for what its allocated on.
If the Pentagon wants to build a bunch of battleships, but the congress gave them money for air craft carriers, I think congress would have a say in it.
This is no different.
I havn't ever found a clear cost analysis of it. But basically yes its more expensive to fix hubble than to launch a new version but there are two important considerations being left out of the argument generally.
1. New version won't be ready for many years.
2. We are going to have to send a manned or robotic mission to saftly deorbit the satallie.
3. Cost of fixing hubble - cost we are going to have to spend to deorbit hubble is fairly low and I believe less than new version.
The main problem with repairing hubble is the fact that ther is no longer any shuttle capable of containing it in it's hold
This is only a problem if you want to return HST safely to the ground in a Shuttle cargo hold. As you say, there is no longer a shuttle in which it will fit, because the external airlock for ISS makes the bay too short.
However, for a repair mission, HST does not have to fit in the cargo bay; it is mounted inside the bay sticking straight up out of it.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
First of all, NASA almost never builds straight replacement instruments. They are always focused on something new. JWST will not replace Hubble by any means. In fact, if both were up at the same time (sustained, not about-to-be-junk), the amount of additional science able to come from their complementary instrumentation should be reason alone to keep Hubble strong until it launches.
Astronomy in the ultraviolet is all but mothballed for a decade if one of the instruments (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, COS) slated for installation in Hubble does not make it to orbit somehow. The only functioning instrument right now is GALEX, an imaging experiment.
However, when we obtain spectra, the ultraviolet, more than any other waveband, gives us tremendous direct information about the atomic composition of many astronomical objects. (Molecules are best studied in the radio part of the spectrum. Solid particles [e.g. dust] in the infrared).
JWST will not fill this gap. It will be a great loss and put a halt to a wealth of knowledge gained from ultraviolet spectroscopy that began about three decades ago.
Of course all this means she is doing her job as a Congressional Representative. She is supposed to represent the interests of her district, even when discussing national intrests
Notice that all of this started happening after the "Mars Exploration Vision" was announced.
:-/ (My guess is that they'll just work on their entry in private, then rejoin the competition at a later date.)
:-)
You're confused. There is no "Mars Exploration Vision". There isn't even a Mars plan beyond "that's what we do after we get to the moon". What there *was* was the "Orbital Space Plane" project. The OSP started as a shuttle replacement program, but was quickly killed when it was realized that a spaceplane wasn't the most useful, reliable, and reusable craft we could build with current technology.
As a result, Bush worked with NASA and redefined the OSP proposal into the Vision for Space Exploration plan. The VSE really wasn't anything new, it just took stock of where NASA has been screwing up for the past ten years, and aims to get them back on track with the plan that Reagan laid out so many years ago. Noticably absent from the plan is plans for massive spacestations and moonbases. Instead, everything has been scaled back, and made to fit into what's realistic for today's technology rather than planning for tommorrow's miracle technology.
Out of this plan comes the Crew Exploration Vehicle, a set of craft that will achieve humans to orbit, orbit to moon, and extended stays on the moon. The first craft will replace the space shuttle, while the other two craft will provide renewed access to the moon as well as testing for a Mars mission.
To develop these craft, NASA is (for the first time ever!) requiring a vehicle flyoff competition for choosing the craft to build. Entrants not only include Boeing and Lockheed, but any other space enterprise who wishes to compete. At one point, t/Space was formed from aerospace legends such as Burt Rutan to compete in the competition. Unfotunately, they recently dropped out of the race due to heavy paperwork requirements.
Beyond the moon craft, the VSE specifies Mars flyby and landing missions "at some point beyond 2020". No hard plans exist for the Mars mission, because it is felt that we don't have enough data yet. Not to mention that a lot will change in the next 15 years. However, NASA is starting to bootstrap some long forgotten projects such as Nuclear Engines. This is a sign that they are serious about the future, and know what it will take to actually accomplish their goals. For the first time ever, there will be no "magic technology" that will appear in the nick of time to complete their mission. NASA will design it simple, straightforward, and with existing tech.
Feel better now?
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