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The Hubble Lives On
tanman writes "CNN reports that NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has agreed to send astronauts on one final mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. No date was reported for the mission, other than before the shuttle fleet is retired. From the article, 'A rehab mission would keep Hubble working until about 2013. It would add two new camera instruments, upgrade aging batteries and stabilizing equipment, add new guidance sensors and repair a light-separating spectrograph. Without a servicing mission, Hubble will likely deteriorate in 2009 or 2010.'"
I hope they get another Hubble Deep Field picture. I'd be happy if NASA just provided us with a bunch of those.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I am very happy that they've decided to launch one final Hubble servicing mission. This will allow the HST to operate until the James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2013.
You, sir, have more faith in NASA's bureaucracy than I do. Having had to battle their system and watched one bone-headed decision after another, I salute your optimism but fear that it is misplaced.
There is a new telescope in the works, but it's not due to launch until 2013. (This is the James Webb Space Telescope.) It does not duplicate what HST does since it will primarily be an infrared telescope.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Keck does exceed Hubble's capabilities for most practical and scientific purposes, and definitely with the dramatic improvement of adaptive optics technology some of the impetus for an optical space telescope is gone. That said, AO isn't perfect so there are still some uses for Hubble. AO can correct for a great deal of atmospheric turbulence, but Hubble still provides more stable images than current AO. Things like the deep field images still aren't terribly practical with a telescope such as Keck because sky brightness is less severe in space, particularly in certain parts of the spectrum (a factor of 600 at 1.5 microns). Also, certain bands are still severely attenuated by the atmosphere even at the altitude of the Keck observatory (and remember, most of the suitable land-based sites are already taken). Keck is a more sensitive telescope owing to its size, so it can detect fainter objects, but remember, we're comparing a two 10m telescopes to a telescope that's around 2.5m. If we put something even modestly larger than Hubble in space it would still be better than Keck for imaging.