Hubble's Advanced Camera Suspends Operations

helio writes "The Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) went offline on June 19, 2006. The cause is yet undetermined, although engineers suspect that the culprit may be a bad transistor in the ACS's electronic control board or possibly a memory corruption event due to energetic particle bombardment. Since a backup electronic controller is available for service, this incident is not very likely to lead to the end of the Hubble's Advanced Camera in any event. But, before any attempt to reactivate the camera, engineers are cautiously evaluating and isolating the probable cause of this incident in order to avoid any further incident."

Comments

Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[BWJones]

Gee, too bad the Bush administration cancelled all maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope, dooming it to a slow death. Of course this whole science thing is overrated, right? In all honesty though, there simply is not enough money to take care of all of the costs given that the Bush administration wants to send men to Mars to the detriment of many, many science missions at NASA.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[54mc]

It seems were killing all the easy ways to learn/discover our universe. I can see why the president wants to put men on Mars. It creates a buzz. No one talks about the pictures the Hubble just took, but a man standing on another planet, now that's news!

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[amabbi]

Gee, too bad the Bush administration cancelled all maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope, dooming it to a slow death.

Hubble servicing project (tentatively STS-125) scheduled for 2008, as per Wikipedia.

But don't let that get in the way of your ignorant, uninformed, nonsensical political rant.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[McBainLives]

Don't take me wrong- I'm just as disappointed about the potential end of the Hubble as anyone else. But you might want to take manned exploration of the local neighborhood a bit more seriously. It's more than just hype (which in retrospect, was too big a part of Kennedy's proposal in the 1960's). A serious, long-term plan for returning to the Moon, then moving on to Mars, will do us a lot more good than studying events hundreds or thousands of light-years away (think survival- it never hurts to have a backup plan).

Besides- once we have a permanent presence on the Moon, we'll be able to set up telescopes much more powerful and easy to maintain than Hubble ever was.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[BWJones]

Hubble servicing project (tentatively STS-125) scheduled for 2008, as per Wikipedia.

That reference came from a Washington Post article in April, 2005. Since that time, NASA has had their budget cut for almost all science missions that have nothing to do with putting man on Mars.

But don't let that get in the way of your ignorant, uninformed, nonsensical political rant.

There was nothing in my post that was not factually based. The reality is that given the budget management of the nation, there is simply not enough money to do basic science missions if we send people to Mars.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[McBainLives]

But don't let that get in the way of your ignorant, uninformed, nonsensical political rant.

Hey- this place wouldn't be the same without uninformed, nonsensical political rants! Don't scare him off! I need this place- I can't bring myself to go back to Doonesbury...

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[cyclone96]

NASA has been reallocating a lot of funding from science and aeronautics to "exploration". The official goal is a manned moon landing (by 2018).

That being said, the Hubble servicing mission is still in the cards and long lead work is being performed to support it. It's almost certain it will be flown. In fact, the NASA web page for servicing mission 4 was updated just a little over a week ago.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I think you're absolutely right, about the value of manned space exploration, but I also think that right now NASA is dithering; they're not spending enough time and money on either the things that already work (e.g., Hubble) or on things that will only work if we put a ton of effort into them (e.g., a human return to the Moon, and then on to Mars.) Without a massive increase in their budget -- which I'd love to see, but I'm not holding my breath -- the current situation boils down to "jack of all trades, master of none."

And yes, I think the White House is largely responsible for this situation. When Bush first started talking big about manned space flight, I honestly thought that this was the one thing he might do to turn his administration from an unqualified disaster into a major success; long after stupidities like the Iraq war have faded into history, a thriving human presence in space would be a great legacy. But nope, it was just election-year hype. As usual.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[UnrefinedLayman]

Comments like this always blow my mind. It makes my brain throb like I just drank a milkshake. No one ever stops to hear themselves actually speak them and so apparently don't realize how mind-numbingly dumb they are (the words, not the people). I'm talking, of course, about this line:

"Mars--the backup planet, the backup plan."

Mars is one of the least hospitable and most difficult to reach places you could hope to find. Sure, Mars is probably the Club Med of all the other planets and satellites in the solar system but to believe truly that it is a sensible safe place to escape is nonsense. The least hospitable places on Earth are still way, way less lethal than Mars. That's right--lethal. Mars is not kind to even microbial life. We've come up with a lot of creative ways to peek around Mars looking for signs of it and the best we've found is the possibility that it was there but died a really, really long time ago. That's a nice big "No Trespassing" sign. Violators are killed on sight.

Contrast with Earth, on whose worst day life still flourished. Believe it or not, there have been some pretty shitty days down here, like the Cambrian-Ordovician extinction, the Ordovician-Silurian extinction, the Permian-Triassic extinction (80+% extinction in a million years, not bad), our favorite the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, and our own Holocene extinction. When the shit goes down on Earth it is still far, far more habitable than any extra-terrestrial location. Animal life requires other life if it wants to survive. Starting from scratch on a lifeless planet is much harder (and strikes me as much less sensible) than sticking around where life has clung with tenacity for the last 3.5 billion years.

The exception to this would be a planetary catastrophe that left no room for doubt that Earth would be less habitable than Mars is now--that would result in the total loss of liquid water, the burn up of all atmospheric oxygen, the loss of the Earth's magnetic field, the death and extinction of all life (from microbes on up), and the tipping point of sunlight being blocked from reaching the ground. Following this it would have to be more difficult to use resources available to eke out survival on Earth than it would be to use resources to reach another planet and start anew there.

One point that's often brought up is that if we start now we can have people living sustainably on Mars who could carry on without the need for Earth, thus preserving our human legacy. I'm of the belief that when we are sufficiently technologically advanced to achieve such a result that a planet-wide catastrophe will be easily weathered right here using that same technology.

It's like the guy saying string theory is eating up valuable resources that could be used elsewhere and everyone else saying it's too fun to give up. Dreams of colonizing Mars and living out our Ray Bradbury fantasies are too fun to give up, but don't bandy about the idea that it's anything remotely serious. At least string theory has some sensible math to back it up; there's little that's sensible about martian life as the human-kind "backup plan."

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[wolfponddelta]

Hubble servicing project (tentatively STS-125) scheduled for 2008, as per Wikipedia.
But don't let that get in the way of your ignorant, uninformed, nonsensical political rant.

Budget cuts and safety concerns were the reasons given for cancellation of the 2006 repair mission, and any future such missions are currently speculative possibilities "under consideration." http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/future/ has more on this, as does http://hubble.nasa.gov/.

But don't let actual facts get in the way of your ignorant, uninformed and nonsensical attacking of someone else for actually knowing them.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[cyclone96]

Well, for what it is worth you can consider me a friend from JSC. While the mission isn't "officially" on, it's considered to be almost certain around here. I'm not sure about the White House, but congressional pressure to fly this mission is considerable.

Ironically enough, the Constellation program manager (Jeff Hanley) cut his teeth on Hubble as a Payloads officer in Mission Control. When the original SM4 mission was cancelled, he posted this
to sci.astro.hubble.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[turgid]

No one's proposing that we attempt to breathe the atmosphere on Mars.

It would be an interesting and valuable laerning exercise setting up a semi-independent colony on Mars. We need some nuclear powered rockets first.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[(negative video)]

Mars is one of the least hospitable and most difficult to reach places you could hope to find.

Mars is the second most hospitable planet we know, after Earth. The only resource we don't know for sure that it has is uranium ore. The only really annoying thing is the giant long-duration dust storms.

The least hospitable places on Earth are still way, way less lethal than Mars.

Humans survive in Antarctica and the deep sea solely by means of a metric buttload of technology. Take it away and they die in seconds or minutes. Mars is different only in degree, not kind.

Contrast with Earth, on whose worst day life still flourished. [big list of mass extinctions]

If by "flourished" you mean "nearly all the big, elaborate organisms were snuffed out".

We've come up with a lot of creative ways to peek around Mars looking for signs of it and the best we've found is the possibility that it was there but died a really, really long time ago. That's a nice big "No Trespassing" sign. Violators are killed on sight.

No. We have done virtually no serious work on discovering Martian life (HPLC-tandem mass spec with chiral columns), and the conditions are within the known acceptable range for Earth-type microbes (sunlight, porous minerals, and temperature and pressure compatible with condensed-phase water).

The exception to this would be a planetary catastrophe that left no room for doubt that Earth would be less habitable than Mars is now--that would result in the total loss of liquid water, the burn up of all atmospheric oxygen, the loss of the Earth's magnetic field, the death and extinction of all life (from microbes on up), and the tipping point of sunlight being blocked from reaching the ground.

Don't be silly. You don't have to completely atomize Earth for the four horsemen to ride. A nice big asteroid coming in at 50 km/s and hitting a nice thick layer of limestone would likely make the human race go extinct. Being caught in a beam from a supernova or similar high-energy event would be very bad. Having some idiots set off a 20 stage thermonuclear bomb, just to see how far down the crust really goes, would give the human race a run for its money.

... there's little that's sensible about martian life as the human-kind "backup plan."

Fuck sensible. It wasn't sensible for people to fill a grave every few yards on the deadly path between London and San Jose, but they did it anyway. Their equally unreasonable descendants will one day do it again, at enormous expense and personal risk.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[jani]

Mars is the second most hospitable planet we know, after Earth.

Well, Venus is closer, warmer and with a substantial atmosphere. Granted, it's a hell on traditional materials and space technology, but the atmosphere offers significant protection as well as a plentiful source for oxygen (carbon dioxide). On the downside is the weak magnetic field, but Mars offers nothing in that department either.

It's easier to focus on Mars because the planet has been more thoroughly explored, and the lack of atmosphere means that we can practice on the Moon. We have no similar testing grounds for Venus, except for high pressure equipment used in deep sea exploration and drilling.

I'll also agree that Venus probably is more technically challenging to settle, but a bonus point is that as an inner planet, it has less risk of meteoritic impacts. :)

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[twiddlingbits]

I worked on the upgrades for the HST (i.e. SM4 - Service Mission Four). They were cancelled in favor of spending more $$$ on STS (Shuttle) and mostly ISS( Station). The pressure was on to finish ISS which really meant the money was going to the Russians who promptly wasted 90% of it.

IIRC NASA actually budgeted all three but only two got funds. Then when funding was restored for SM4 a few years later, we had all the problems with STS which all of a sudden meant going to Hubble was "unsafe". We knew the HST was slowly dying and that we only had 2 out of 4 gyros (not same problem as this article) that were good and one more that was "flaky". If we lost one of the good gyros we could rework the software to account for the flakiness of the 3rd gyro, but lose two and HST shuts down as you no longer have attitude control to point the instruments. The bad thing was all of these gyros came from the same batch from the same company. An earlier service mission had replaced two bad ones that failed earlier but the new ones themselves are now failing. Last caclulations I recall the HST might make it to sometime in 2009 or early 2010 before it fails, but that was under "nominal" conditions.

It was NOT GWB's fault, the decisons were made by Congress not wanting to fund NASA to the level where they could do all three, HST, STS, and ISS. Remember ALL spending Bills MUST orginate in the House of Representatives, then be approved by both houses of Congress and the President. It also doesn't help that NASA's budget gets lumped into bills that fund other things like HUD and Veterans so it often gets short shafted as we can't spend LESS money on Social project or Veteran's benefits so we can so space.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[Pometacom]

I'm not sure I understand the logic that "it won't do us good" to study events hundreds or millions of light years away. By the same logic, why would it do us good to study the Moon, the Sun or Mars? They're pretty gosh-darned far away -- especially by boat. Nor do I understand the big jones for a "manned" trip to the moon or Mars (howbout the Sun?). If robots and remote analytical gadgets can gather the same or more scientific data as humans more quickly and at a remote fraction of the cost, why is this not a good thing? Isn't one of the key purposes of technology to take people where they cannot physically go (inside your arteries, for example)? Seems the whole "manned" expedition thing has very little to do with science and is mostly a hubris, nationalism and manifest destiny thing. If manned interplanetary visits were cheap, safe and easy, we would already be doing it. Any manned visit to another celestial body except the moon would eat up all of the $$$ for all other space projects and then some -- while producing far less usable and interesting scientific data. And we've already been to the moon a bunch of times. The holy grail for interplanetary, manned space trips has always been to find other life. Non-manned exploration technologies are now filling that role very well. At best, Mars may support very scant and simple microbial organisms -- or just fossils of them -- and these would most likely exist at depths or locales on Mars well beyond what a first, second or seventh manned exploration could investigate. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter suspected of perhaps (maybe) harboring life have such wacky and inhospitable conditions and are so distant from Earth that manned exploration is pretty much out. So Mars is it in terms of finding and signs of life and we already know that at best we might find a few very simple microbes or fossils of them. Hubble or its replacement already gives us viewing conditions outside the Earth's atmosphere, so there's no crying need for a telescope on the moon that will do the same thing at a much higher initial and ongoing cost (think of the $$$ bill for sending a Hubble repair/upgrade flight to the moon rather than just into Earth orbit). Any other reasons?

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[ajpr]

Ground (Earth) based telescopes are almost (if not better) than Hubble in certain wavelengths due to fairly recent technologies. The key ones being Adaptive Optics and Interferometry, which have allowed for astronomers to compensate/eradicate most of the problems associated with the atmosphere. 10 years ago these technologies were mostly theory, and 20 years ago there was no-one that would take the ideas seriously. We really have come a long way since Hubble was on the dtrawing board, and I don't think we need space based telescopes for most areas of astronomy. Of course there are a few wavebands that we cannot observe properly on Earth, but it's not the case that space telescopes are superior. In fact, the next generation telescopes (ALMA, OWL, ELT etc) will most likely surpass the JWST in the frequencies they can observe.

Astronomers generally refer to space telescopes as complementary to ground telescopes. But we won't be building telescopes like ALMA, OWL etc on the Moon because of the difficulty in assembling them on Earth. They need a lot of space and materials (both to house and to construct, which is a problem for the limited space on rockets) and optical telescopes need their mirrors cleaning. I just don't see us building large telescopes on the Moon when we can get almost the same results from having space telescopes and ground based ones that complement each other.

The only way I see us building Lunar telescopes is if we find a cheap way to launch the building blocks. If we manage this though, we would open up a lot more possibilities, such as building the telescope on Mars. The South Pole would be a good place as it has: free water (as in not tied up in rocks like the Moon)/rocket fuel (with a decent power source) and has a lot more gravity than the Moon (which would be a lot better for long stays). Most people would say we shouldn't go so far due to the long trips for astronauts, but the ISS currently has around 6 months stays for crews with no problem.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[barawn]

Starting from scratch on a lifeless planet is much harder (and strikes me as much less sensible) than sticking around where life has clung with tenacity for the last 3.5 billion years.

Life does not equal humans. There are plenty of ways that life could stick around and still eradicate all humans. Or all human civilization. Either or, because without civilization, we're just another species waiting to be extinguished. And human civilization is really fragile.

While it may seem less sensible, starting from scratch on another planet has several advantages.

1. You control the environment. Unless you go full-bore terraforming (and then, if you do, see below) you're living in a meticulously controlled self-contained habitat. Anything goes wrong, and it's likely a hell of a lot easier to fix than on Earth. This sounds bizarre, but think about it: killer virus gets loose on Earth, and you're in huge trouble. Killer virus gets loose on a habitat-controlled Mars... and everyone suits up and you irradiate the hell out of the place. Being in a lethal environment has its advantages. The only things that live are the ones you want to.
   
2. More resources. We're unfortunately a very resource-hungry organism, and Earth's only got so much. While the standard argument is "we're nowhere near close to running out" - what, you want to wait until we are?
   
3. And finally, but probably most importantly, we're a very lazy organism. You think we'll bother figuring out how this ecosytem works on our own? Please. We're terrible at learning things unless there's pressure on us. "Another country might get to the moon!" "They might get the bomb!" Man. Throw those things at us, and we're freaking geniuses. We're better off living in a sucky environment. So even if we terraform the planet, we'd still be better off - we made it, so we'll understand it better than Earth.
   

The third point is really the big one. Just look at our pathetic attempts at ecological engineering - they're jokes. We usually end up constantly screwing things up. But I wouldn't discount the second one, either: Mars has a pretty big advantage in terms of depth of its gravity well.

Plus, from a very practical standpoint, you could also think of it as the start of interplanetary zoning laws. It'd be real nice to offload really crappy industry to Mars, after all.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[obnoxiousbastard]

No one talks about the pictures the Hubble just took, but a man standing on another planet, now that's news!

Ummm... that's just wrong. Do you have any idea how many papers have been written citing Hubble data and how many discoveries it has made!?

There are people talking about Hubble data all the time and will continue to do so long into the future.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[grozzie2]

I worked on the upgrades for the HST (i.e. SM4 - Service Mission Four). They were cancelled in favor of spending more $$$ on STS (Shuttle) and mostly ISS( Station). The pressure was on to finish ISS which really meant the money was going to the Russians who promptly wasted 90% of it.

500 million a pop (last report, probably much higher today)to shoot off a shuttle, and even then, you guys rarely get around to actually doing it, to busy spending money on who knows what. Then you want to accuse the Russians of _wasting_ money? Dunno if you noticed, but, they actually do send folks back and forth to the ISS, and they even manage to do it on a schedule.

Just an fyi, spending a few billion to fix a design problem, then finding out it wasn't fixed at all, that's a waste. Keeping a huge standing army of folks on staff to launch shuttles, and then not launching them, that's a waste. Spending a few bucks on Russian launches because domestic folks cant get the job done, that's not a waste, that's 'damage control'. While it may be possible the Russians dont spend that money as efficiently as you would like to see, hey, it's still a hell of a lot more efficient than tossing money into Nasa to get rides to the ISS, after all, the Russian expenditures actually result in rides to the ISS. Tossing money into Nasa in that respect, well, that's kinda like tossing it into a black hole these days, a total waste as it doesn't seem to result in rides to the ISS at all, just more excuses why it's not 'safe' to launch, and more reasons for delays.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[navyjeff]

No one talks about the pictures the Hubble just took...

That's why I have this on my personalized Google. Granted they're not all Hubble images, but there's certainly a significant number of photos for your perusal.

Re:Hubble maintenance cancelled.

[barawn]

Well, Venus is closer, warmer and with a substantial atmosphere.

If by "warmer" you mean "melts lead", yeah, it's warmer. Space probes can't survive on Venus. People definitely can't.

But Venus's biggest problem is related: it doesn't rotate nearly fast enough.

You want an ideal planet? Smack Mars into Venus. Unsurprisingly, that's how Earth started out.

but a bonus point is that as an inner planet

That's more of a downside: I don't think liquid water can survive on Venus already for any long period of time due to the solar insolation. The Sun's so bright from Venus that it'll just rip water in the atmosphere apart.

It's definitely possible to imagine a stable, terraformed Mars. It'll hold an Earth atmosphere for long enough for it to matter, and it's close enough to the Sun that water would even be liquid for a portion of the year.

Venus, I'm not so sure. The rotation rate's a killer, for one, and I think the solar insolation might be a death knell as well. Maybe you could build a giant solar shade, though, but you could always do the reverse on Mars to heat it up as well.

More links

[helioquake]

Here is another link that may be worthy of checking:

Space.com article.

And the original statement from Space Telescope Science Institute (this was edited out by the editor...not that I mind being edited, btw):

STScI Anomaly Report

Re:More links

[MustardMan]

So let me get this straight...

The 'editors' at slashdot refuse to correct misspellings, typos, and grossly inaccurate statements.

Put in an informative link, though, and they are ALL ABOUT removing that shit.

Budget Cuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe cutting costs by using a disposeable camera wasn't such a good ideas, huh?

Re:Funding

[Firethorn]

Hubble always had a limited life span, and with the loss of two shuttles, we have to look at prioritizing, especially with the requirement for the astronaughts to be able to evacutate to the ISS if the shuttle is unable to land.

Personally, I'd be working more towards launching a replacement for the Hubble. Ground based telescopes have caught up in many ways with adaptive lense technologies, but the hubble works much better in the infrared from what I understand. Design the replacement more towards making up the shortfalls of ground based telescopes.

Given the cost of a dedicated shuttle maintenance mission, it might even be cheaper to just launch new ones, especially if you make a series of them, allowing you to spread R&D costs between multiple sats.

Hmmmm..

[electronmaster]

Shoulda bought the warranty. I'm a camera salesman, I know.

Re:Funding

[cyclone96]

I work for NASA on the manned programs.

Officially, Sean O'Keefe (the former NASA admistrator) dropped the last Hubble servicing mission from the Space Shuttle manifest because of the risk involved (Hubble was the only non-ISS mission left, leaving no option to fix the orbiter with the help of ISS assets or possibly "holing up" in the ISS while a rescue mission was processed). I'm really oversimplifying it, but essentially that's the reason.

Of course, I'm fairly certain Sean O'Keefe was the only individual within NASA that thought this was too great of a risk. That includes the astronauts who would actually strap themselves to the orbiter stack. Everyone at NASA loves Hubble. O'Keefe may have been playing politics to get Congress to "order" the mission, thus relieving NASA of the risk decision.

O'Keefe is gone now, however, and the new administrator (Mike Griffin) has been more or less been in favor of servicing Hubble again.

Anyways, while the flight isn't officially on the books it's more or less common knowledge around here there is going to be a servicing mission in 2008 or so. Long lead work is being done on the flight. As long as something drastic doesn't happen to the shuttle program that causes it to shut down, that mission is going to be flown. Hubble is NASA's crown jewel.

Re:Funding

[helioquake]

...but the hubble works much better in the infrared from what I understand....

No, no, no!

[I'm banging my head on the desk right now, because of you...]

The Hubble Space Telescope, by design is a telescope designed to observe the Universe in ultra-violet (UV) waveband. Its mirror gerates the finest point image at 2800Angstrom, and the image rapidly degrades at a longer wavelength (esp. IR). It's Daniel Goldin and his stupid minions who successfully sold the idea that the HST would be a great IR telescope (to detect planets, which were the hot topic to sell to the congress for funding).

You can do most of IR observations from the ground. Even the imaging quality ain't too bad from the ground, either. The best part of doing IR in space is the gain in sensitivity (the atmosphere isn't exactly dark in IR; also it absorbs some water molecule wavebands). But then, there is Spitzer telescope for IR space astronomy today. You don't need the Hubble to do that.

On the other hand, you can't do UV astronomy from the ground. The air is opaque to UV light.

Of course

[Itninja]

"At this point, the ACS is in a safe configuration, and further analysis is ongoing,"

Your computer is currently running in safe mode. Some functions may be unavailable.
Looks like it's time to do a wipe and reinstall the Hubble. It's probably just spyware anyway...

Place your bets

[Joebert]

But, before any attempt to reactivate the camera, engineers are cautiously evaluating and isolating the probable cause of this incident in order to avoid any further incident.

That's fancy talk for "Placing bets on what's going to break next".

Re:Place your bets

[TubeSteak]

That's fancy talk for "Placing bets on what's going to break next if they do something stupid".

Fixed that for you.

In a sense, they are placing bets, but whatever course(s) of action has the highest probability of causing failures... they aren't gonna do it.

After all, the engineers have nothing to lose if they spend a month trouble shooting every possible failure scenario.

Re:energetic?

[0racle]

I believe that would be dust.

Headlines compared:

[Tablizer]

Another website, USA-Today I think, had a headline that somehow stood out much much quicker. Compare:

Here: "Hubble's Advanced Camera Suspends Operations"

There: "Hubble Blind!"

Now I know why they don't let nerds write ad copy :-)

Two words: SPACE HELMET

[bullshit detector]

Hubble Computer: Just a moment...just a moment...I've just picked up a fault in the ACS camera unit. It's going to go a hundred percent failure within 72 hours.
NASA: Is it still within operational limits right now?
Hubble Computer: Yes, and it will stay that way until it fails.
NASA: Would you say we have a reliable 72 hours to failure?
Hubble Computer: Yes, that's a completely reliable figure.
NASA: Well, then I suppose we'll have to bring it in, but first I'd like to go over this with Mission Control. Let me have the hard copy on it, please.

Hubble Origins Probe

[bhima]

This would be nearly a non-issue if the powers that be had gotten off their asses and funded and built the Hubble Origins Probe.

This failure is one of many that show that America is loosing the capability of space flight and research.

From their website (http://www.pha.jhu.edu/hop/):

The Hubble Origins Probe (HOP) is a proposed 2.4 meter free flying space telescope.The HOP concept is to replicate the design of the Hubble Space Telescope with a much lighter unaberrated mirror and optical telescope assembly, enabling a rapid path to launch, significant cost savings and risk mitigation. HOP will fly the instruments originally planned for the 4th HST servicing mission as well as a new very wide field imager, enhancing the original science mission of Hubble.

Re:Funding

[Quantum Fizz]

A few other factors.

O'Keefe was NOT a scientist, but a business-track administrator, and as such didn't have an intimate understanding of the import of science as a full-blooded scientist does. In other words, he looked at the Hubble telescope as a business project, not as a scientific instrument. Luckily Griffin is completely opposite, he was a scientist and worked his way from science through science management, so has an understanding of both fields pretty well.

Additionally, Columbia was lost on O'Keefe's watch, so he's overcompensating by being excessively cautious for future flights. Unfortunately to the point of compromising scientific fulfillment.