NASA Preparing Manned Hubble Service Mission

danimrich writes "According to an article at Space.com, 'NASA's new Administrator Mike Griffin told reporters today [April 29] that he informed key members of Congress Thursday evening that he would direct engineers at Goddard Spaceflight center to start preparing for a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope on the assumption that one ultimately will go forward.'"

Comments

To All Those Citing Safety Concerns

[colonslashslash]

It's been said many times before here, but we have to take risks if we want to explore and expand in new areas. We are still relatively new to space travel, even getting people into orbit is something that we don't have a great deal of experience with, so of course there are risks and dangers to overcome.

As a poster above me said, these astronauts are fully aware of what can go wrong, yet they still volunteer themeselves for the job. They have a choice over risking their lives to further the human race, and bravely, they take it. If we, as a species, never took on tasks that involved risks and dangers, we would have progressed nowhere.

I'm not saying safety issues should be overlooked, or brushed to one side here, it's important we get these people back to Earth safely, but it's also important that we don't let ourselves be held back by fear of what _might_ or _could_ happen.

The Hubble is arguably one of NASA's greatest missions, and to let it wither and die in space because a previous shuttle mission ended in disaster, would just be foolish in my eyes. I really do hope they do send up a maintanence mission so the Hubble may continue operation, and I wish all those involved the best of luck, you are truely the pioneers of our age.

Yeah vs Huh?

[jackb_guppy]

It is about time that leadership is showing at NASA.

We shutdown a system over safty concerns, if that was really true, then get the guys off the space station and shut it all down!

NASA is about science and the need to know. That is a very human need. NASA is tech that makes up our very jobs. YES, even the check out clerk at your supermarket is using products in the job and life daily that came from NASA fund research and neededs.

Now we some at the head again that is thinking about "ruuning NASA the science group" not "how to keep his job". Before you shutdown a rescue mission to Hubble (or projects) what are real issues? That is science! Knowing the facts and THEN and ONY THEN MAKING A DISCEDION!

Is it worth it?

[LordoftheLemmings]

Is it really worth sending a shuttle up to fix it? It costs so much to send a shuttle up to do it wouldn't it be cheaper to send up a new one? It seems to me that were going to spend entirely to much money on something that is old obsolete. Why not replace it with something new and better?

Re:Is it worth it?

[grozzie2]

If that was your car... would you just buy a build a new one becuase it was out of gas and needed new shocks and you wanted to add a new a satilite radio?

That would depend entirely on your location. If you car was in the back yard, in the middle of a densly populated area, just down the street from <insert major chain store name here>, probably not. It would be very cost effective to walk to the store, buy the parts, then fix the car.

OTOH, if your car is located at a research camp, on the icecap at one of the poles, far enough away from 'civilization' that the _only_ way to bring in those spare parts is to fly a ski equipped C-130 3000 miles to deliver the parts, you will rethink the whole thing. The cost of transportation far exceeds the cost of the equipment being transported, by a couple of orders of magnitude. If the C-130 is going to be sent anyways, it may well be more efficient to just load up a new car in the back, and deliver that.

If one goes on the assumption there is budget for a shuttle trip, then the real question _should be_, what is the appropriate payload to carry? Should it be carrying spare parts for the existing old hubble, or should it be carrying a brand new telescope of some kind. In either case, the 500 million launch budget will be used.

In the case of hubble, pork politics, and budget line items get in the way. It's really silly, because the arguement to decide if the old one is fixed, or a new one is launched, has nothing to do with final cost, and everything to do with 'which budget does it come from?'. Launching a new modern replacement would entail creating a new mission line item in the budget, a process that's not likely to happen. Fixing the old one would shift funds into an existing line item, a process that may well be able to be pushed thru. The amount of funds in each case doesn't even enter the equation, it's all about what can be achieved politically.

Dropping 500 million into an existing line item is possible, but creating a new line item instead, with a value of 300 million, not gonna happen. That's how the 'efficiency' of a beaurocracy works, in particular one that's designed to entice voters with financial mumbo-jumbo. Joe congress-critter knows it's cheaper to fix an old car, than to buy a new one, so it's _gotta_ be cheaper to fix hubble than to launch a new telescope.

The real problem with a system that works this way, it's so damn full of pork. When you sit back and ask 'wheres the beef?', you'll discover, the politicians live an a diet of pork. The congress critters have become so adept at slicing and dicing pork for serving to the constituents, dont think they even remember how to throw some beef on the grille and serve up a steak.

Re:Is it worth it?

[Soldrinero]

It is absolutely worth fixing it.

First off, we can't send up another Hubble for cheap - it has to be designed, built, and launched, all of which is expensive. To maintain the current telescope, all we have to do is launch, and as a fraction of what NASA is already planning to spend on launches, it's pretty cheap.

Secondly, Hubble is not "obsolete". Every single time it has been serviced, its capabilities have been upgraded with new instrumentation, vastly increasing its sensitivity and usefulness. Hubble has quite modern CCDs with exquisite sensitivity, and a servicing mission will install even better equipment. Here are the first images that were taken with the ACS camera installed in 2002. Compare those with this early WFPC2 image (an earlier camera). The servicing missions have increased Hubble's sensitivity by literally orders of magnitude, resulting in many incredible new discoveries.

We should absolutely fix this telescope.

awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show the difference between a engineer and an accountant. The engineer will do a real risk assessment, rather than have BS made up and then force his underlings to go along and to take the heat for their lies.

Re:I think they know what to expect

[RealUlli]

Sitting down in a tin can, with several gallons of highliy flammable liquid, hurtling down a concrete strip, in close proximity with other, similarly configured tin cans is supposed to be dangerous, too.

Yet, we do it every day - it's called commute on a motorway...

Regards, Ulli

The Hubble is dead, long live The James Webb!

[True Grit]

From the article:

There is no replacement for Hubble's visible-light acuity even in the serious planning stages.

Sigh. That's because we want to move *beyond* visible light to see farther into the past!

Its like this: You've got an old Ford Escort, but you've ordered a new supercharged Ford Mustang GT. Since its a custom order, it'll be a few months before it gets to you. Between now and then, does it make any sense to spend money keeping up the Escort, especially when money is tight?

I'm all for the fascinating pictures we get from Hubble, but the *really* interesting stuff lies in the infrared spectrum, beyond Hubble's sight. That's why IMO, if we can't do both, then we should stop wasting money to keep the Hubble up, and use that money to accelerate its replacement.

Re:The Hubble is dead, long live The James Webb!

[helioquake]

although part of the HST's range does go into the UV, it primarily goal was always the visible light spectrum.

Sigh. If Lyman Spitzer heard you say something like that, he'd ripped your head out of your body...

Run the optical tracing based on the specification of the HST. You'll notice that the best optical image of the HST is attained at 2800AA. The original concept of a space telescope was to have a high-spatial/spectral resolution imager/spectrograph in UV and visible light. At least that's what I thought when working with the HST instrument!

You've got the concept of the JWST more or less correct. But the JWST was treated as a followup of the HST by the scientists and engineers at the Space Telescope Institute. Not many other professionals would agree with your view. I certainly do not.

Robo servicing vs. Shuttle servicing vs. Deorbit

[SaveHubble]

I've posted about this topic before (here: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146007 &cid=12230905, and here: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146007 &cid=12232506)

There are several important factors in deciding between them. Lets look at the pros and cons.

Cost:

1. Shuttle servicing will cost about $300M to fly the mission plus ~$1.5B-2B to keep the shuttle program and staff going for an extra 4-6 months. Total cost then is conservatively $2.3B.

2. Robotic Deorbit Only is estimated to cost about $850M, for development, launch, and operation of the vehicle.

3. Robotic servicing is expected to cost $1.4B for dev, launch, and operation through splashdown.

However(!) if we take option 1 or 2, we'll have to fly a 'robotic proving' mission around 2015 or so to enable missions to Moon and Mars. This could cost anywhere from $500-800M (likely closer to 800 if it's to be at all ambitious). So lets look at the total score-card:

Shuttle: $2.3B + $800M = $3.1 Billion
Deorbit: $850M + $800M = $1.65 Billion
Robotic: $1.4B - ~250M already spent = $1.15 Billion

So that was cost. Now lets look at education:

Doing another shuttle servicing mission will teach us very little. Sure, we'd learn some EVA techniques, management techniques, things like that. But nothing significant. That's why we'd need to launch a robotic proving mission in 2015.

Robotic Deorbit would teach us a lot about autonomous rendezvous (since my last post it's apparent that we need to work a little harder on that; DART bumped into its target, I hear). Bear in mind that craft had no forward-link commanding from the ground... it was entirely autonomous. It cost only $100-something million to dev, launch and "operate". These are lessons we need to learn to go to the Moon, and Mars.

Robotic Servicing would teach us a lot about the autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations (see above) since it's the same problem here as the robotic deorbit. It will also teach us a HUGE amount about ground-to-space tele-robotic operations. So much so that if it works we could be confident enough not to need an expensive proving mission later on. We'll be doing complex robotic tasks on things that were designed for humans (on space-station, everything's designed to be robot-friendly). We'll be pushing the envelope of our knowledge.

Don't let that put you off though. We're pushing the envelope on the ground here, right now. We've pushed it so far now that most tasks on the Hubble robotic mission will be trivial. We aim to push it far enough that ALL tasks will be trivial (or at most 'complex') by the time we launch. We have a robust capacity to re-plan and re-approach a problem on orbit. We have the advantage of time (see next pro/con) on our side. And we have contingency in case some more critical item fails before we launch. I believe that up to 30 days before launch we have the ability to re-manifest the cargo. Don't quote me on that figure though.

Now lets look at perhaps the most important feature of each mission: The quality of the result:

Some say a shuttle servicing mission will do a better job at servicing Hubble. This used to be the case. In looking at the robotic mission we had to give up some things. The STIS failed last summer, as some of you may remember. The robotics guys evaluated that task, and decided it would be too difficult. Many bolts in hard-to-reach places, etc. So that was dropped. However, I've recently heard on the wind that a Shuttle mission will only have a few days of EVA available between tile inspection and prep for landing. The shuttle mission will be forced to leave things out too, and the result is that the priorities we identified for the robotic mission are pretty much the same priorities we'd have for the sh

Re:Safety Concerns

[d474]

"And I'd rather see people "spending" their lives willingly on something the truly believe in for the betterment of all mankind, than for any squabble over territory or natural resources."

I agree 100% with your entire comment.

To go one further, I think it's about time this nation drops all the "Wars" on drugs, terrorism, etc., and start a new, single, all encompassing "War on Ignorance". The stated goal of such a war could be to educate the entire global population. To root out Ignorance and replace it with Truthful Knowledge would be the ongoing battle. As a side note, it would also help fight drug abuse and terrorism (religious fundamentalism) as well, since Ignorance lies at the root of those nasty human behaviors.

If we threaten to stop space exploration everytime one of our scientific soldiers goes down in a blazing rocket accident in search of knowledge, then Ignorance wins!

We must show resolve in our fight against Ignorance. To do otherwise only encourages the perpetuators of Ignorance.