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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.'"
Change today to yesterday?
Manned missions have a surprisingly high rate of failure/death, even more so than any other form of transport (aeroplane, boat, car, train, bus, etc.). Are they going to be taking a Space Shuttle up there or a different craft?
Do not mod me down...this is just a feeling, and not backed by any [credible] source except for bloggers and pundits.
Griffin's predecessor, Sean O'Keefe, cancelled a planned Hubble mission in January 2004. O'Keefe cited safety concerns in the wake of the shuttle Columbia disaster.
There have been several successful shuttle missions that have serviced the Hubble in the past so there's no reason to think that this particular type of mission is more dangerous than any other.
I think anyone stating that a shuttle mission to service the Hubble is not safe has an agenda beyond safety.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Are you kidding?
"I have nothing to add to this conversation other than stupid supposition that is wholly uninteresting. Oh, please don't mod me down. Because I was able to post so quickly after the story was posted I deserve to have a +5 Interesting post."
I have the distinct feeling most of these astronauts have a clue about the possible dangers. If any of them are that worried, maybe they should have gone to law school instead. Not to diminish the importance of their safety, I just don't see any clear reason why this would be more dangerous than any another manned mission??
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While I support the idea that the government should offer some leadership, and tax people to support services they need but do not want, we also should leverage the power of IT to support more interactive spending, so we can buy space pork barrels instead of the traditional pork barrels, if we're so inclined.
Nothing like rose-colored thinking on a Saturday morning.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
perhaps you should of read the summary instead of rushing to get first post
start preparing for a space shuttle servicing mission
i guess school wasnt your thing, like most of your countrymen
It's funny just how much of an issue safety has been made in many discussions of a manned service mission. The USA doesn't even give its troops armored vehicles in its war, and that doesn't seem to really rile people up (discussion of the ridiculousness of the war aside). You'd think a little risk to save what has IMO been one of the most profound scientific tools in all of human civilization would be deemed an acceptable risk.
...two have been destroyed, both times resulting in deaths.
I wish we had a stargate, instead. A stargate with which we'd find some Ancient technology and fly around in these cool spaceships. And then I would get to meet this hot chick in uniform, Samantha Carter, and she'd dig me. And we'd have hot sex for hours and hours. She would also make me wear a leash.
Oh well, man can dream... man can dream.
Griffin said today that a final decision on any possible crewed servicing mission is still pending NASA's successful return to flight with the launch of the shuttle Discovery. However, with that launch now delayed nearly two more months, Griffin said the Goddard team has to get started now to preserve the option of saving Hubble before the popular telescope is scheduled to go dark.
now mod me down if you must , but thats a rather worrying development
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.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
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 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?
One of the many things I have always disliked about the Shuttle space-car fantasy is the illusion that this risk has somehow gone away and "shuttling off" to space is now no different than catching the subway to work in the morning. It's not that way, and it's never going to be that way with the technology at hand. It takes a massive amount of energy to get into space, and controlling large amounts of energy is always risky whether it's getting into orbit or an ordinary domestic chemical plant.
Let us understand that space travel is risky as well as expensive. Let us do what we can to minimize those risks. And then give the men and women who are willing to take those risks the tools they need and the opportunity do their damn jobs. Let us mourn when they pay the ultimate price, and let us celebrate when they give us things we never could have had without their sacrifice.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The sum-bitch govt sends out Marines to be killed in Iraq with inadequate armor and worries that the *Shuttle* isn't safe???
WTF? Oh yeah, killing a dozen astronauts is a national PR disaster while hundreds of Marines deaths are just... grunticide.
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.
Why don't they get a more powerful telescope on the ground and point it at the Hubble?
They could fix it from here!
I'm surprised nobody's thought of this. Maybe those "rocket scientists" aren't so smart after all.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
This has very little to do with the article, but a few days ago the L.A. Times published an article regarding the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit that focused on their fight against child pornography ("Sifting Clues to an Unsmiling Girl"). They are the law enforcement organization that photoshopped the victims out of child porn photos in order to get the public's assistance in identifying the backgrounds (it worked). In any case, the article had this amazing claim:
Wow. All but one in four years. Seemed rather unlikely to me.
So, I called the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit and spoke to Det. Ian Lamond, who was familiar with the Times article.
He claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Of course, even if the figure was given jokingly, shouldn't the Times' reporter have clarified something that seems rather odd? Shouldn't her editors have questioned her sources?
Nevertheless , Detective Lamond does claim that a majority of those arrested show "at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest."
They've arrested well over one hundred people over the past four years and Det. Lamond claims they can gauge this interest in Star Trek by the arrestees' "paraphenalia, books, videotapes and DVDs." I asked if this wasn't simply a general interest in science fiction and fantasy, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter or similar. Paraphrasing his answer, he said, while there was sometimes other science fiction and fantasy paraphenalia, Star Trek was the most consistent and when he referred to a majority of the arrestees being Star Trek fans, it was Star Trek-specific.
You have to remember that Sean O'Keefe was a bean counter, who gave top priority to saving his own skin. His statement makes perfect sense when you bear that in mind.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I glanced at the title and read
/.?!"
NASA Preparing Manned Hubble Service Mission
as
NASA Preparing Manned Hubble Secret Mission
and thought, "gee if they're trying to keep it secret then why are they announcing it on
I stole this Sig
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.
I've had it before. It's boring and the two sides really should just agree to disagree. That said here's my $.02:
a) manned space missions have a higher risk. they also have a higher reward.
b) every shuttle pilot/astronaut ever (except for Krista McAuliffe) were trained test pilots. They had taken risks much greater than this in the course of being test pilots.
c) Every person ever lost in a space accident was well aware of the risks and chose to accept them. To say that they are not capable of making that decision, and that we should just terminate any and all manned spaceflight based on what YOU consider an unacceptable level of risk, not only disgracefully dishonors their service and sacrifice, but also their decision making ability. And for anybody to question the decision making ability of test pilots and astronauts from their slashdot armchair makes me physically nauseous.
d) when we've made anywhere near the quantity of manned spaceflights as we have commercial airline flights, you'll have a right to bitch about shuttles not being as safe as airplanes. Practice makes perfect, and we haven't had anywhere near as much practice at manned spaceflight as we have commercial air travel.
e) unmanned spaceflight, whenever it would serve the needs of the mission and the needs of science just as well as a manned mission, is an alternative that should be pursued. This alternative should be immediately abandoned if it ever impacts mission viability.
f) should we likewise abolish all fire departments and tell firemen they don't have the right to take a dangerous job that they believe needs to be done just because that job is risky? Fighting fires is a job that needs doing. So is scientific research and superatmospheric astronomy.
g) We're very overdue for a major impact disaster from an asteroid or comet. When, not if, this occurs, the only warning we'll have to all move to Kansas won't come from ground-based telescopes - it will come from space-based ones, which need to be serviced by manned spaceflight.
h) america, from the cotton gin to the internal combustion engine to the atomic bomb to the polio vaccine to the microchip, has been ever based on scientific evidence and rational thought. Our superiority in the marketplace of world governments has not been maintained by our security staff alone, but mainly by our incredibly effective R&D department. This is one of many things that make me fiercely proud to be American. And for self-proclaimed "conservatives" to toe this knee-jerk anti-science line is about as clear a declaration of intent to sacrifice everything that's ever made America great as one could ever hope to see (or dread seeing, in my case). Next you'll be trying to dismantle checks and balances... oh wait...
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Comparing commuter jets to extraplanetary vehicles is like comparing wooden rollercarts to all-terrain motor vehicles. There is a significantly higher amount of work that goes into testing and maintaining the latter, where the former has a lower level of risk. And besides, not every average joe is prepared to leave this quaint little mudball (just look at how many people have fear of commuter flying, itself).
There are dangers in both commuter flight and spaceflight, but I would hardly call them equal risk.
The Hubble is simply a tool. WRT to telescopes, I would rate the invention of first couple of telescopes as being great. But Hubble is simply the next step in telescope history. But it is one of our best tools at this point in time.
Right...
You are the sole IP owner of this new miraculous source of zero point energy and expenditure. Going to make billions upon billions of dollars. Be the next BG! I sir|madamn and honored to have read you and basked in the considerable faux light you cast.
Leave it to the AC to point out unworldly solutions to physical problems. Sheese.
-FlynnMP3
$100 billion dollar space station.
While Infrared light may generate alternate avenues of science, humans dont see in infrared. Hubble produces space results that Joe Sixpack can actually see or have his kids download for their school projects. Thats how NASA can get funding, produce results people can see and can benefit from.
The hubble telescope fires the imagination and inspires future generations of scientists. Hubble cost $2 billion to put up and only cost $500 million to service. Why not make the most of your investment.
Someone has sold us a myth that average people dont care about space exploration. This is bullcrap. They care when they feel like they are a part
of it. When they feel like NASA is just another government agency squandering money on stuff they dont understand, thats when NASA gets hacked.
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
Splashdown?
My understanding was that the robot would either stay with the Hubble (although the mass would probably mess up the telescope's gyros) or it would be simply dumped overboard and eventually burn up.
Preliminary robot designs have all been spindly. I doubt any part of it would survive to actually splashdown and there's no need to recover the thing intact. Just make another one later.
Sig for hire.
She isn't that great looking and the character is just, well, a fucking annoying know-it-all.
No. My understanding is that the Hubble was designed to be launched and serviced with the Shuttle because the Shuttle was what there was, not because it was a particularly good idea. The United States had already made the political/management decision to retire its heavy launch vehicles, like the Saturn V, in favor of the Shuttle.
According to the all-powerful Google, the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope will launch with an expendable vehicle.
She is, quite frankly, a geek guy's dream girl. She's smart, she can handle weapons and she could kick my ass in hand-to-hand combat.
"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."
:/)
Wrong, it costs them about $120million to add another shuttle flight to the launch manifest(this was pre columbia though
Also, about 1/4 of the shuttle programs costs are from Astronaut training.
Did you really think all those Hubble images were raw images fresh from the scope? No they were all computer enhanced, just like the IR images from IR scopes are.
HUMANS DON'T NEED TO SEE IN INFRARED, ONLY THE SCOPE DOES. jeesh.
PS: It's not an "alternative avenue", its the primary avenue where most scientists want to go anyway.
Bingo. The last estimate I saw when searching earlier says the cost for a manned repair mission is $500 million now.
NASA doesn't intend to bring any shuttle down again without an external inspection of their wing surfaces before reentry. From now on their intent is to dock with the ISS, inspect the shuttle exterior then undock and deorbit. Servicing the Hubble now requires a trip to the ISS and unfortunately those two are too far apart for that to happen (unless NASA changes its new rules, which is unlikely, but possible). Thus the dilemma, and the talk of a robotic mission. A robotic repair mission would be difficult, but a robotic deorbit mission, where the robot simply grabs Hubble then takes a swan dive to the atmosphere would be relatively cheap because of the simple requirements of the robot.
How many kids have an infrared scope at home? I bet not many. Now how many kids have visible light telescopes at home? Maybe they dont get as good an image as the hubble, but people can relate to the hubble telescope in a way they cant relate to infrared telescopes.
It'll get dumped overboard along with the large spacecraft that brought it there. Together they'll likely make it to ground (water in this case). All that's left behind is the relatively small propulsion module to later de-orbit Hubble.
Exactly and MOD PARENT UP!!!
There are many pictures that are taken at a lot of frequencies from a number of different platforms. SOHO takes awsome pictures of the Sun that the human eye cannot see. Kids could care less what frequency of light creates the immage. If a pic is cool then a pic is cool.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
We *must* get of this planet and colonize otherwise we are toast as a race - I applaud every single person that has ever risked their life to learn more about what is out there for humankind - beyond the atmosphere we are current;y enjoying. As many of the posters have already said we need exploration, and if anyone is prepared to take the risks (ie the astronauts) they have my full respect and my absolute support. All here on earth should be doing the same. Ok, so peace man ..but..
They keep changing their attitude towards Hubble's fate.
Instead of spending billions of dollars on hardware to try and eliminate the risk of manned space flight, bring back go fever and pay astronauts ten million dollars a flight. Yes, safety might even drop - you might to get a 1-50 margin. But, astronauts would be paid for work commensurate with the risk. Accept that some astronauts can and will be killed and pay them to take that risk. Instead of trying to engineer to prevent every conceivable disaster - there are just too many, engineer to the best you can to make a deadline. Then, fix only the problem that caused the accident, when it happens, and move on from there.
This is my sig.
Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili (AKA Zakhar Grigoryan Melikyants AKA Joseph Stalin)
Idi Amin Dada
[I'm trying not to get this thread canned so I won't mention Eva Braun's husband lest it invoke G------'s Law]
Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde (AKA Ignatius Loyola)
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Mao Zedong
Demoiselle Candeille's worshippers
(append your favourites here)
Not hard to see why the framers of the US Constitution acted as they did.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...that of the thousand or so people killed by starvation and disease every hour, day and night, the vast majority were put in this position by regimes which follow the same religion as you do.
You almost certainly do not think of it as or call it a religion and would probably argue that neither Materialism nor Naturalism were religious positions, because of this bizarre idea that a certain amount of stained glass or chanting has to be involved for it to qualify as a religion - or at least a priest (think Richard Dawkins) - but that doesn't stop the underlying philosophy from being, hah, fundamentally religious.
The end result of all such pogroms has so far been death and destruction, the bankrupting and degrading of the societies involved - yes, including the nominal winners.
Deism per se isn't the problem; even the relatively bad deists (think Inquisition or ritual sacrifices atop Mayan step-pyramids) can't hold a candle to the twin evils of "might makes right" (AKA "survival of the fittest") and "the end justifies the means". The means are the end.
Back on topic, despite massive technical and financial shortfalls in many disciplines, the Russians have kept within hailing distance of the USA in the space race by accepting greater risk levels; imagine what would happen if the West also had the courage to do a few things without insurance in quadruplicate. I'm not talking about the kind of administrative insanity which led to Chernobyl, but the willingness to potentially add 0.0001% to the world's death toll in order to flood the place with the kind of cheap energy and materials which would end starvation and disease within a decade (and, en passant, the population explosion: the way to stop people from overbreeding is to make them rich).
If I was going to space, I'd rather not die trying, but I'd rather die than not try. The resources to eliminate much pollution, clearfelling and other general crapping-in-our-own-nest are within reach and the only reason we aren't already tapped into them is our immediate fear and greed short-circuiting any serious long-term investment.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
A decent 50m reflector (big piece of light foil alloy with platinum-wire structure, Bucky Fuller would love it) ought to make a dandy weapon. Not much chance of dodging and if you collated all of that sunlight down to a beam 0.5m across you would be putting about ten megawatts per square meter into your target. For up to several hours at a time.
The same distributed electronics needed to focus such a disc for astronomy would work just as well for walking it through a terrorist camp or turning a cave hideout into a pressure-cooker.
If someone explains this to Dubya, Hubble's replacement will be up by 2007, and giving us unbelievable resolution.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
/ME reads a +3 Scroll of Get Sucked Into Jet Engine to the AC loser.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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?
IMHO, we should. A copy from an old post of mine:
Hubble Origins Probe: replace instead of repair?
Astronomy Magazine reports that an international team of astronomers has proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or human repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe, reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build and launch, less than the estimated cost of a service mission.
Now, Hathor on the other hand... I sure wouldn't mind being her Jaffa!
Huh? Amateur telescopes can't get ANY of the images that the major ground or space-based telescopes can. And of course they can relate to computer-enhanced IR images, just like computer-enhanced VL images, did you *look* at any of the images I linked to?
So much for massively overhauling NASA after an accident to focus on lofty goals. Now they're back to taking unnecessary risks on projects which have extremely small value. Never mind it would cost less and be less risky to put a brand new telescope in orbit or that their ambivalence to disasters has grown as their disasters have increased in number.
I'll address your points in order... I know you'll probably be the only one to read this, but that's fine.
/. post to be fully descriptive. When I say "pretty much the same" I mean this:
First, DART was not a failure. Sure, it didn't do what it was supposed to, but already some lessons have been learned from it. Bear in mind, I'm not a part of that mission, so I don't know details. The craft managed to adjust its orbit autonomously to rendezvous with its target. It registered and recognized the target with its cameras, computed required changes in orbit, and successfully rendezvou'd with it... too successfully, in fact. As I understand it, noisy GPS signals resulted in excessive thruster firing, and in the end it collided with the target. Fuel spent, it retreated to a final graveyard orbit. Not the dismal failure you implied.
Regarding superior robotic technology, I'm guessing you don't understand the heritage of technology we're using. The servicing robotics have been fully developed and are sitting in a clean-room in Canada. The hardware was developed over the past couple decades in preparation for use on ISS. We've taken actual flight-ready hardware from that project with the promise of building replacements. The HST capture robotics draw upon many components, systems, and assemblies common to the dexterous robot for ISS, the Canadarm on ISS, and the SRMS on Shuttle. Nothing new in the robotics. All heritage hardware. Further to that, all operations needed to fully service Hubble are being proven on the ground with a validated dexterous robot 1G simulator. Advanced robotics development was not a requirement for this mission. In fact there was no time for that, so we've gone with what we know works.
You sound eager to jump on my turns of phrase. There's not room in a
The batteries and rate gyros MUST be changed out. Both robotic and shuttle missions will do this. How they do it is different. The shuttle mission will bring new batteries, take out the old ones, and put in the new ones. The robotic mission will bring new batteries and patch the connectors over to them, leaving the old batteries in place. The shuttle mission will bring up new gyros, take out the old ones, and put in the new ones. The robotic mission will bring up new gyros attached to the new WFC3 instrument, and patch them into the 486 computer, leaving the old gyros in place. The COSTAR instrument is to be changed out and replaced with COS. This is not a critical operation, but is highly desired. Both the Shuttle and robotic mission will do this. The tasks are effectively identical for human and robot, with several aspects better performed by robot (inserting COS, closing aft-shroud doors). 4 connectors and 1 ground strap must be transfered from the old instrument to the new. This is easy for humans, and hard for the robot. The FGS (fine guidance sensor) instrument is to be replaced with an upgraded version of the same. Again, not critical, but highly desired. Like COS, several aspects of the operation are better performed by robot. Again, 8 connectors and 1 ground-strap must be transfered. This is hard for the robot, easy for humans.
These are Hubble servicing priorities, regardless of how the mission is done. It's possible the shuttle mission would add the ability to fix the power regulator for STIS. This is unlikely however, as access to the many many bolts required to be loosened is tough for both humans and robots, and requires much time.
Reaction wheel changeout is a contingency task for the robotic mission. It might be added to the human. If a need arises, this task could be added to the robotic mission up to 30days pre-launch.
Anyway, there you have it... priorities are priorities, irrespective of the way you carry them out. Not much will change from robotic to human mission, as time constraints prevent the shuttle mission from adding everything they want.
The instruments are housed inside the HRV in a thermally controlled keep-alive state. Bay doors are left closed