Hubble Camera Shuts Down

Maggie McKee writes "Hubble's main camera is offline again, but the problem does not appear to be with its power supply, like it was this summer. This time, the issue seems to be the electronics on the sharpest of its three camera-like channels, the High Resolution Channel. NASA says the worst-case scenario is that the ACS could lose half the channel's field of view, so it would take longer to observe its targets. If the problems are truly unrelated, it's been an especially unlucky few months for this instrument!"

Comments

Re:cue the shuttle enthusiasts

[DerekLyons]

With shuttle trips running on the order of a billion dollars these days, what will generate more actual scientific data? Squander those kind of funds on a rocket ride to fix the aging hubble, or, invest half of it in modern ground based observing infrastructure,

Spending on Hubble - absolutely no question. Ground based infrastructure (no matter how modern) cannot;

• see the wavelengths that Hubble can (they don't penetrate the atmosphere)
• see as faint an object as Hubble can (the light doesn't penetrate the atmosphere)
• see as fine a details as Hubble can (that pesky atmosphere again - though here they are getting better, but still nowhere near what Hubble can do),

No matter how much you spend you cannot overcome the first two limitations, and third is still somewhere in the misty future. To some extent, more ground infrastructure (though we can always use more) is just 'more of the same'. Hubble is unique. (And don't bring up the JWST - it 'sees' in different wavelengths than Hubble.) No amount of money can change the laws of physics.
 
Having said that last - I just *know* somebody will pipe up with 'but how do we know there is not some undiscovered principle'. How? This is 2006 - not 1806 or even 1906. These things have been intensively studied - and no principle exists to make the atmosphere transparent to UV. None. Not now, not ever. The same goes for extremely faint objects - barring intervention from Harry Potter the atmosphere isn't going to become less turbulent and more transparent.