Hubble Verdict: De-Orbit

theonetruekeebler writes "CNN reports that NASA has reached a final decision for the Hubble space telescope: De-orbit. At some future date a liquid-fueled rocket will dock with the telescope and fire, hurling Hubble into the ocean. However, "Our best estimate is we probably will be able to continue to do science as we're doing it ... somewhere into 2008," according to program executive Mark Borkowski."

Comments

Ocean?

[AAeyers]

Why drop it into the ocean? Why not just blast it off into space and see what it finds until we lose communicaiton? It seems like a waste to me...

Re:Ocean?

[tomhudson]

Hubble is meant to run mainly off solar power. Shooting it out of the solar system would make it useless after it got a short distance from the sun.

Who says it has to leave the solar system? Set it up around Mars, get REALLY GOOD pix of the martians and Elvis' face. Or just let it float around anywhere outside the earth-moon system. Or towards Venus and Mercury. A solar sail can also be used to sail inward, towards the sun, if angled properly.

giving it a high velocity would drastically decrease its ability to take clear pictures

Come on, it's already moving pretty darn fast. And it's in an environment that induces a LOT more problems (the earth tends to get in the way of anything in its' orbital plane on a regular basis, for example, and there are orbital irregularities induced by mascons, etc).

Crap in the ocean

[datafr0g]

Apologies to all who loved Hubble, and maybe this is a bit to early to ask, but are they gonna get that crap outta the ocean afterwards?
Or is the ocean going to become a graveyard for things that get temporarily sent in to space. I'm not a trolling hippie, just curious.

why not stablize its orbit?

[Whammy666]

If they can dock hubble with a rocket to de-orbit it, why not point the rocket in the other direction to boost its orbit? Seems like a terrible waste to trash the hubble. Even if it's getting old, it's still way better than terrestrial telescopes.

Re:why not stablize its orbit?

[acroyear]

yeah. the *real* problem with NASA is they see these end-of-usefulness deadlines as being N years off, and forget that any replacement technology needs N+M years to develop, but because N years seems so far away, they don't start on the replacement...

so here we are with a shuttle fleet on the virge of permanent decommision (and 2 lost already) and a hubble satellite, and no plans for an actual replacement because N years hit NASA a LOT sooner than they realized...

Its the problem of NASA not being a commercial enterprise. The IT world, the auto world, the airplane world, the appliance world, the electronics world have all lived under the spectre of Plan Obsolescense for decades. We *know* that we have to have the replacement for something read *before* the current model goes out of usefulness.

NASA has never lived under that problem before, so as an institution, it simply didn't know how to react.

Re:why not stablize its orbit?

[acroyear]

Don't assume that I was arguing in favor of things being different than they are as such. I am not making decisions, merely presenting opinions and observations (that are more valid than you imply here).

I never said NASA was disfunctional in any way, though being a bureacracy (strike one) made up of humans (strike two) doesn't exactly inspire an high degree of confidence. But I feel that way with most human bureaucracies, so I learn to not worry about it. Certainly the (almost) perfect Cassini-Huygens work so far has made up greatly for many of the human errors of the Hubble first-try and Mars Probes, and the great unknown error in the Galileo probe's antenna.

I was not recommending that NASA become privatized, only that they private companies think ahead a little better and PLAN so that when things have to be replaced, the replacements are ready. I was not specifically saying that Hubble needs to be replaced ASAP (though I certainly would like it to, and I'm *hardly* alone on that, given what I've gleaned from friends who work in NASA). I'm just saying that they had nothing on the table for that eventuality, just as they currently have little on the table for the eventuality of eliminating the shuttle fleet.

That was all my comparison was meant to make, and I said nothing as such about desiring to privatize NASA and my follow-up post did mention the "profit" nature and how long-term research doesn't lead to profit in a recognizable sense.

Most companies, when they see a success, *immediately* begin plans for the next version. Software, entertainment, "inventions". They get a tangible benefit from something, see places where it might be better, and get started on building the next while another group continues to get what they can supporting the old.

NASA has done this before, but there are times when they act like they've never heard of this concept, and Hubble's fate to me is one of those times. Hubble dies in 2008, and the best chance we've been told for a replacement is 2020 (last I heard). THAT is lousy planning for a program most researchers consider a great success (once they got past the initial technical goof).

Granted, the crappy budget the Feds give them doesn't exactly help, being the result of the fact that Washington is just as short-sighted as Wall Street is, as demonstrated by the DARPA decision posted elsewhere on this site.

Why not bring the thing back intact?

[Douglas Simmons]

I realize it would cost a lot of cash money (if even possible) and would probably require more than one shuttle mission, but the Hubble is in the top ten of NASA's items of greatest symbolic value in our history. The thing belongs in a museum, not the ocean. It'd be a bitch to retrieve and we'd be risking lives, but you gotta respect the Hubble and figure out how to get that puppy back without disintigrating it too much.

How 'bout it, science?

Re:Why not bring the thing back intact?

[arodland]

I don't know how serious you're actually trying to be, but let me add a word or two. Back in 1962, Kennedy promised that the exploration of space would be the "most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked." The fact that we've come through it with so little lost is partly the result of a great attention to safety and detail, and partly the result of the fact that it hasn't been much of an adventure for the past 32 years.

And that's the real pity of the space shuttle program. It's still space, and it kills people on occasion. Considering that the technology is ancient, it probably kills more people than it really should. And yet, we use it to go nowhere, and do nothing really interesting. If it was actually "shuttling" someone on the first leg of a longer voyage, maybe it would have a purpose. But we don't have any intent of doing that; everyone knows the space station will never get any real use either, so together they're just massive wastes of money and life. I'm not crying at the grounding of the shuttle.

Re:If its been decided...

[rpj1288]

Try a google for Kepler Syndrome. You'll find sites that explain it better than I can, but basically, debris hits something, and it creates more debris. These go on to create more collisions and more debris, eventually closing off an entire orbit plane.

why do anything at all?

[tloh]

I don't see why they need to do anything to the Hubble at all. They don't have money to keep it operational, but there is funding to hire engineers, procure raw materials, build a rocket, launch it, dock the damn thing, and ram it into the atmosphere? Why not just do nothing and leave it up there? Kind of like what the navy does with old ships - keep it in the mothball fleet but don't necesarily strick it from the registry. Who knows what uses it may have in the futher? I suppose one would argue it is a possible collision risk to other operational satelites which might have intersecting orbits, but what's one more object to the thousands already being tracked by military radars?

Re:why do anything at all?

[Delta Vel]

The reason they have to do something with it is that if they do nothing, it will stop being able to make the little corrections that keep it in orbit. If it falls out of orbit uncontrolled, it could land on people or property. Better to shoot it down so that we can control where it goes.

Re:why do anything at all?

[tloh]

Well, this is wonderful! I recall one of the reasons for *not* servicing Hubble was that it was too risky for the shuttle to go higher than it normally flys, especially after Columbia. What is wrong with letting friction do it's work and bring Hubble down to a safer altitude where it is safer to work on? Instead of building a rocket to crash Hubble into the ocean, it can be used to boost the repaired Hubble back into it's old service orbit.

Finders keepers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if NASA would accept a private sector attempt to repair the Hubble. Have NASA engineers authorize any private mission (from a safety standpoint only... i.e. will not cause space debris). If the mission succeeds... then the mission sponsors _own_ Hubble and can do with it what they want.

Of course... if interests counter to the US were to succeed they'd end up with one heck of a spy satallite :)

Re:Fear

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, these days we have ground-based observatories that rival Hubble. Those can hold us awhile while the ESA or JAXA work out the next big space observatory... ;-)

That's the claim anyway. But even if the resolution rivals Hubble, Hubble is still sensitive to wavelengths that are blocked by the atmosphere. Moreover the observatory in the article I found from your reference is in Chile; so it's only useful for astrological objects visible south of the equator, whereas Hubble has a full 360 view.

But aside from that, you might have a point.

Re:Fear

[orthogonal]

"A shuttle mission could repair the Hubble."

I wish we had the money

"Report Says Pentagon Spending on Weapons to Soar"

to save Hubble

"The government is readying a plan to spend more than $2 billion on a routine 10-year overhaul to extend the life of the aging warheads. At the same time, some weapons scientists say the warheads have a fundamental design flaw...."

but I guess basic science

"The shift away from basic research is alarming many leading computer scientists and electrical engineers, who warn that there will be long-term consequences for the nation's economy."

never did

"The voice of science is being stifled in the Bush administration"

us any

"Led by twenty Nobel laureates, the scientists say Bush's government has systematically distorted and undermined scientific information in pursuit of political objectives."

good.

"For Bush, science is a dirty word"

Stress Pill delivery scheduled for 2009

[billstewart]

Hate to bring up politics in the middle of a good parody, but the next stress pill delivery option is scheduled for January 2009, depending on what happens in the election of November 2008. That doesn't mean that the next Administration will be more or less friendly to non-military applications of space, or to spending big bucks on it, or that I'm predicting which party will win the next election, but we've got a pretty solid guarantee that Hubble isn't part of the Bush League's goals for the military-industrial complex or the US Federal Budget.

Even if I think that taxpayer funding for this project was a mistake in the first place, that's a sunk cost, and we might as well milk it for all we can get now that it's up there. And hey, maybe Virgin Galactic can stop by in that direction by then.

Re:Deorbit

[SWTP_OS9]

Isent that an IR only and not visible light?

2-3 gap

[maxwells_deamon]

Are we sure that we can live with a three year gap?

There will probably not be a major asteroid stike on earth during my lifetime, However, I belive they will identify a rock that will impact at some future date before then.

The risk to life and limb to the shuttle crew could be justified just by the use of Hubble if an impacter is identified.

Also remember that the sky is not static. We have events like comet strikes into Jupiter, supernova....

Also do you expect the replacement scope to arrive on time?

Push it to ISS?

[Stephen Samuel]

You don't actually have to push it all the way to ISS, just close enough that the space shuttle can reach the ISS if it notices that they've lost 5 critical tiles during launch.

In fact, depending on how big the replacement parts are, The shuttle might even be able to fix Hubble, then drop off at the ISS 'on the way home' with a care package -- thus getting in a bit of a two-for-one.

The obvious question is: Just how incompatible are the two orbits? Does the physics make this an feasible idea?

Re:Why de-orbit to Earth?

[Manhigh]

a) de-orbit into the sun. Nice recycle/reuse spin i.e. we get some of the energy back as sunlight; or

Deorbiting into the earth requires maybe 1 km/s of a change in velocity. Deorbiting into the sun would require something like 25 km/s or more of a change in velocity. Actually, the easiest way to get to the sun from the earth is to fly by jupiter and use its gravity to kick you into it, but thats still way more than 1km/s.

b) de-orbit into deep space. Nothing says "There's other intelligent life" to an alien scientist like a slightly used space telescope careening away from an overlooked solar system.


Escaping from the earth's gravity, and then the suns gravity requires a lot of propellant as well.

In short, policitians only like a space program that doesnt cost a lot of money. If you want NASA to have more funding, you need to talk to your representatives, no NASA.

Re:But NASA...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this assessment. Basically, in the 35 years since Apollo, NASA has produced two projects worth a damn:

- The HST.
- The Mars Rovers.

They really got their money's worth out of the Apollo Programme as all they need is a red filter on the original moon-landing sets and voila... Mars! (kidding)

All joking aside, when you look at the pace of the space programme following Apollo, we've slowed to a crawl... every few months we throw a few astronauts up to the point where they are just BARELY in space to do esoteric tests that show little to no benefit. Meanwhile, every launch results in more debris being left in orbit, presenting a hazard to future missions.

The problem is not so much the space programme itself... it's the human flight programme. The space shuttle was known to be (a) a death trap (b) outrageously expensive (c) virtually useless as a reusable transport vehicle even in the 60's when it was initially being designed. There was a lot of resistance from respected engineers who thought it was being done purely for the "wow" factor. Time has proven these people right.

The fact is that right now, the ONLY benefits we get from sending humans into space is medical statistics about the effects of space on humans... since we never actually send people anywhere, this data is useless.

My own feeling is that the space programme needs to be refocused on developing technologies that will (a) allow us to leave the surface of the earth and enter high orbit SAFELY and without leaving debris behind, (b) developing robotic technologies that reduce the need to send humans into space, (c) programmes that provide a real benefit to humanity as a whole. A list of such projects:

- Creation of a new reusable vehicle less dependent on "wow" technologies... safe, clean, reusable.

- Creation of new propulsion systems.

- Creation of advanced robotic vehicles for maintenance of permanent installments (such as the HST) and for extra-planetary exploration.

- Creation of tools for astronomers to study the heavens (new HST, multiple space-based telescopes, space-based telescopes in orbit around other planets, deep-space probes a la Voyager/Pioneer)

- Creation of robotic platforms to perform tests in micro-gravity that are capable of de-orbiting and coming back to earth when the tests are complete.

Re:Fear

[Jivecat]

I'm reminded of an editorial cartoon that appeared after the Challenger accident in 1986. It had a picture of a Conestoga wagon crossing the prairie with no one at the reins, along with a caption saying "Alarmed by the many dangers, the early pioneers abandoned further exploration except for a few unmanned probes."