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Hubble Camera Lost "For Good"
Several readers wrote in to tell us, following up on the recent story of the shutting down of Hubble's main camera, that program engineers are now saying that the camera is probably gone for good. The trouble resulted from a short circuit on Saturday in Hubble's most popular instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys. NASA engineers reported Monday that most of the camera's capabilities, including the ability to take the sort of deep cosmic postcards that have inspired the public, had probably been lost. We'll be pining for more of those amazing images until the James Webb launches in 2013.
Update: 01/30 23:28 GMT by KD : Reader Involved astronomer wrote in with an addendum / clarification to this story: "I'm a grant-funded astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (www.stsci.edu) in Baltimore. I am very concerned that the article conveys the wrong idea about HST. While HST's science capacity is diminished with the loss of ACS, HST lives on and will continue to produce world-class science, even before its servicing mission in Sept. 2008, which will upgrade the instrument suite with the most sophisticated imagers in history." Read on for the rest of his note. I'd like to point out these facts:
You can view one of our press releases on this here: http://hubblesite.org/acs/.
Update: 01/30 23:28 GMT by KD : Reader Involved astronomer wrote in with an addendum / clarification to this story: "I'm a grant-funded astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (www.stsci.edu) in Baltimore. I am very concerned that the article conveys the wrong idea about HST. While HST's science capacity is diminished with the loss of ACS, HST lives on and will continue to produce world-class science, even before its servicing mission in Sept. 2008, which will upgrade the instrument suite with the most sophisticated imagers in history." Read on for the rest of his note. I'd like to point out these facts:
- A fuse blew on ACS side two electronics — This will LIKELY (we're not 100% sure yet) render the Wide-field channel and the High-resolution channel (e.g. 2/3rds of the camera) inoperable. The solar blind channel will likely be returned to operation.
- While we have lost (2/3rds) of ACS, NICMOS and WFPC2, two fantastic imagers, are still operational. WFPC2 is responsible for many of the gorgeous images that grace many of your desktop wallpapers.
- ACS had an expected lifetime of 5 years. It met that lifetime. The loss of ACS, while of course disappointing, is not necessarily a shock.
- Servicing mission 4 is currently scheduled for Sept. 2008. It will upgrade HST to never-before-seen scientific capability and productivity. The Wide-Field Camera 3, which will be installed then, will essentially be an even more sophisticated successor to ACS.
You can view one of our press releases on this here: http://hubblesite.org/acs/.
while. I'd always post the latest Hubble image as my desktop wallpaper. I'm sure many other people did this too.
God spoke to me.
"We'll be pining for more of those amazing images until the James Webb launches in 2013. "
I think I can wait...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Shhhh. This is just a convenient way to resolve the Hubble hub-bub, we have more space nukes that need work.
Funny, NASA hasn't had problems funding the next generation of space telescope development, even with all of Bush's dealings.
I dislike the current president as much as anyone, but he isn't the cause of all bad things in the world. It makes a poster look juvenile and irrational to blame it all on Bush. NASA has already decided to retire the Hubble since there are new things on the way.
Before anyone asks: the upcoming shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope is already booked solid with other work.
Riiiiight. Like Shuttle in '79? Or Alpha in '95? Or how about Hubble in '86? *sigh*
Well now, I'm all for restraining Dubya from spending public money on pointless wars and redirecting that money to more fruitful purposes, but one should examine the cost of fixing Hubble in-situ yet again, or launching another one. Since the James Webb is already been worked on and is supposed to be put in orbit in 2013, I don't think Hubble is worth spending the estimated $1.3bn, unless scientists can make a damn good case for a speedy repair.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
We'll be pining for more of those amazing images until the James Webb launches in 2013.
Will those images be of the fjords?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
of intergalactic alien porn will surely suffer :(
I am, therefore you think.
That, and now the Hubble camera. I wish we'd gone with a Canon.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Gee...
NASA wants to end the Hubble Mission.
Public demands that it stay on-line.
NASA says that "Hubble is saved."
Main "pretty picture" instrument dies...
Hmmm...
What if the NSA pointed one of their old drifting recon birds the wrong way and refocused it a few million light years from here?
I realize the optics aren't set up to do far-field imaging, but maybe it'd be cheaper and quicker than waiting to fix the Hubble?
the problem I have with the James-Webb telescope is it isn't a *replacement* for Hubble. JW is a non-visible (infrared) scope, and won't produce the type of images Hubble has.
keeping the masses 'in favor' of spending on space involves giving them some of the stuff they want, namely the magnificent pictures Hubble has been providing for years.
If they can't see it, then they won't want to fund it as much.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
you've gotta be kidding me. don't get me wrong, im not a fan of bush by any means, but your statement really gets to me. instead of blaming bush, why not blame time magazines 2006 person of the year for not doing anything about it par posting their ill contempt on webpages.
as long as the american people stand by idly nagging nothing will change (for the better, at least).
it never ceases to amaze me how many americans will blame all the problems on one man -- one man that doesn't even wield the power they think he does.
it also never ceases to amaze me at how well the smoke and mirrors have worked on americans, you bicker about all the petty trivial problems of no importance (gay marriage) and let them divide you as a people when, at their base level, they are completely unimportant. (republican vs democrat, liberal vs conservative).
the sad truth is, most people will never come to a knowledge of why these things are really happening, and whos behind them.
This nation has a serious priority issue. If even a small fraction of the money we're throwing away on Iraq were to go to things like space exploration, we'd probably have a fleet of Hubbles up there watching our first Mars landing. I'd blame this on the politicians, but someone had to vote them in. Maybe when China puts a man on Mars ahead of us will we wake up and start doing our part to advance the human race, even if it's for the wrong reason.
It is not the cost of the instrument, nor the cost of a repair mission that will keep NASA from fixing Hubble, but rather a lack of available mission space to get a crew up there to do the work. The Shuttle fleet is under the gun big time to get the ISS finished before it is decommisioned. There is no other vehicle around that can dock with or, more accurately, "grab" the Hubble, so without a dedicated shuttle mission, a repair is impossible.
Looks like we will in fact be waiting till at least 2013 for any new deep field images. Atleast there is still a ton of science to be done on the existing data... So, in reality, this is much more of a loss for the armchair astronaut than it is to the real science teams.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
I think the James Webb technology is from the late 1990's when the specs were made. So I don't expect a dramatic difference from Hubble.
From The Beeb:
So uh, WTF? Who is right? Will this camera be replaced in 2008, or not?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My problem with the administration (and Congress) was that it cut NASA's funding. NASA had budgeted the James Webb to go online in 2013 and the Hubble to be serviced until 2013 so there would not be any disruption in service. With budget cuts, NASA had to make hard choices. At the same time, the administration was pushing NASA to start a program to put a man on Mars--an effort that would cost many times more than keeping the Hubble going. That's where I put the blame on the decisions in policy, not so much the "evilness" but policy.
For those out there who say that there is a replacement on the way, bear in mind the replacement is 6 years away. That's not too far away, right? Tell that to a scientist who has waited patiently for years for some time with the Hubble. He or she is going to have to do something else in the meantime. Science will have to wait.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
the problem I have with the James-Webb telescope is it isn't a *replacement* for Hubble. JW is a non-visible (infrared) scope, and won't produce the type of images Hubble has.
I'm certainly not a specialist, but while visible spectrum images are more stunning for the general public, maybe IR images are more useful to astronomers? What's more, now the Hubble is demised, perhaps it's possible to give the James Webb the option of imaging in other parts of the spectrum as well as IR as an afterthought.
keeping the masses 'in favor' of spending on space involves giving them some of the stuff they want, namely the magnificent pictures Hubble has been providing for years. If they can't see it, then they won't want to fund it as much.
I'm sorry but not everything can be driven by what people can see or appreciate. If it was, there wouldn't be mathematicians or theoretical physicians. I assume that if astronomers are now building a IR space telescope, it's because they have more use for IR signals (that can't be received on the ground) than visible light ones, and in this case the public should learn to appreciate research for what it is, even if they can't marvel at it on a large poster in the outhouse. In any case, I'm sure NASA has a PR department that'll do a great job colorizing IR images for public consumption.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
When I was coming back from San Fran a couple weeks ago (after Macworld) there was a multi-million dollar NASA camera that'll be on the next space ship going through security at the same time I was. You'd think they'd check those things before hand.
STS-125 is scheduled to launch in 2008, and is supposed to be conducting the final service mission. Don't think there has been any official word yet on fixing/replacing the camera yet though, but it would seem wasteful not to, unless they just decide to scrub the mission.
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." - Blaise Pascal
then go right ahead. I doubt the pictures would be any better than taking a regular camera set to macro mode and turning it skyward.
Yes this is very sad but even without ACS Hubble still has WFP2 and NICMOS so its entirely worth servicing it because it can still do bleeding edge science. I don't think there is much hope for servicing ACS. Most of the large ground based telescopes come equipped with atmospheric dispersion correctors (two fancy counter-rotating prisms) and Shack-Hartmann sensors and these along with the larger primary make up a lot of the difference for some science purposes, though ACS will be sorely missed and soon. HST proposals were due recently so they'll probably extend the call for proposals by a few weeks but there will be a lot of unhappy folks who will have to go back to the drawing board so to speak and start from scratch.
s earch/acs/viewall/1 and you can get some pretty stunning images from the ground with relatively small telescopes - some of the bigger names in astrophotography like Robert Gendler, Neil Fleming, Ron Wodawski do some stunning stuff.
If you still want pretty pictures for your desktop - this is not really the point but its astronomy for the soul which is very important - then theres a fairly large collection of ACS images http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/free
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
I read in an article on yahoo news, which I cannot find right now, that some of hubble's electrical shorts may have been related to debris floating in space. Is the HST in the same orbit as the satellite that China recently blew up?
Access to Hubble has always been severely limited and imagery and other data
was screened by NASA. Even images transmitted to the ground were encrypted.
Actually the reason they settled on JW was so they could point it at the ground and learn what channels are being tuned to and when with everybody's remote controls.
"They could fix it, probably at a cost about 20 times less than the original one"
Oh please. The *total* cost to develop and launch the original Hubble was about $2 billion. Any Hubble servicing mission is estimated to cost an excess of $1billion a pop.
so i heard u like mudkips
Mike broke the Hubble! Mike broke the Hubble!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Actually, although the Advanced Camera for Surveys produces some of the deepest and highest resolution images, especially of distant objects, it is the wide-field planetary camera that produces a lot of the most memorable images, such as the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula.
Hubblesite.org has a good layman's description of the instruments on the Hubble.
Also, we're still getting many fine images of the planets, stars, galaxies, and nebulae around us from the Spitzer and the multitude of ground-based scopes that make great backgrounds. And don't forget the fantastic Mars rovers or Cassini.
..to Hubble, it's merely its successor by NASA. I think it should be stressed that they are different kind of telescopes, James Webb is supposed to be an infrared only telescope whereas Hubble is UV, optical and near-infrared.
Far to often people speak about James Webb as the ultimate replacement for Hubble. However the optical and UV bands will be lost without it.
...but the excitement of seeing some of those pictures can't compare with what I felt when I first saw this pair of galaxies and the Orion Nebula with my own eyes in my shiny new low cost ($300) 8" reflector (even if they didn't look as spectacular as in those pictures I linked to).
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
It's all a 'GO', they are just waiting for a floppy to update the firmware.
Houston, we have a problem...
Perhaps we should all pick up Photoshop (or GIMP for all you luddites) and make our own space images?
/. pot.
I've done this on many an occasion, and it turned out pretty well, plus, it wasn't even my idea to start making these kinds of wallpapers...
People like Greg Martin (Google him), or the guy running digitalblasphemy.com have just made their own, to their taste, with what I'd say is higher clarity than Hubble really achieved.
Just a couple of pennies in the
HoosierGeek
Would anyone notice? Random pictures of cosmic gas and dust sure all look pretty similar after a while.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
To replaces the ACS, "111 screws have to be taken out, to get to the part to be replaced! Yikes."
Seriously, they are a waste of money.
How is aerospace engineering and basic science a waste of money?
+++ATH0
the hunger in the world?
Your point gets made a lot, but:
1.) You can see in visible light from the ground, and several modern telescopes beat the hubble in that respect.
2.) Ultraviolet (another capability that will be lost with Hubble) isn't as interesting to astronomers as infrared. JWST will far outperform Hubble in IR. Some capabilities you just can't afford, otherwise we'd probably have half a dozen variations on the Hubble in orbit.
3.) JWST will also produce stunning images. They just won't be true color. For that matter, neither are most of the Hubble images. Moot point.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/12/27/the- top-ten-astronomy-images-of-2006/
-- An AC.
Access to Hubble has always been severely limited and imagery and other data
was screened by NASA. Even images transmitted to the ground were encrypted.
All Hubble data (note: all Hubble data) is available from the Hubble Archive at
the Space Telescope Science Institute (http://archive.stsci.edu/hst). Scientists who
propose to use Hubble are granted a one-year proprietary period on their data,
but those data are available after that proprietary period.
Incidentally, Hubble is not "gone". There are still two imaging instruments on-board
Hubble that are working fine (the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Near Infrared
Multi-Object Spectrometer), as well as the Fine Guidance Sensors. Two new
instruments are slated to be installed in the next Servicing Mission in late 2008.
"There is no other vehicle around that can dock with or, more accurately, "grab" the Hubble, so without a dedicated shuttle mission, a repair is impossible."
Not true. I was directly involved with the plans to send a robot up to service the Hubble. It was definitely feasible - we even worked on various orbit scenarios to make it happen. The fact that it was decided to use a shuttle does _not_ mean there were no other alternatives. (I used to be a contractor at NASA GSFC.)
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
The news conspicuously avoided any mention of China and the cloud of junk China sent shooting through space right before all these satellites failed.
MSNBC said the ACS was the primary producer of data since 2002 and it could not be replaced in a single repair mission. MSNBC also said it failed 2 months short of its 5 year mission. People like MSNBC. They like Keith Olbermann. They trust Keith Olbermann more than their own eyes. MSNBC gave quite a bleaker picture than the funded astronomer.
The real fear is they'll cancel the next repair mission because it's a lost cause. Not good if you're living on Hubble grants.
The Shuttle fleet is under the gun big time to get the ISS finished before it is decommisioned.
That makes a lot of sense... Much like "I've got to finish painting the barn before we burn it down", or "Let me plant this last petunia before you rotory-tiller the flower beds", or "I'm sorry, that paper will need to be signed before we can shred it" make a lot of sense.
I think, in a lot of ways, we need to "reboot" NASA.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
have to do with dropping bombs on people?
(hint: nothing)
+++ATH0
Man oh man, they should have used a circuit breaker instead of a fuse. I'd hate to get up there with a bag of those little fuses and find out I had to go back to the service station for the right one.
The only 'serivce mission' the piece of shit hubble deserves is a good de-orbiting.
You seem to have misunderstood me.
The SHUTTLE fleet is being decommisioned, NOT the ISS.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Is this actually available for launch? I can't find anything online regarding a vehicle/payload that can service the Hubble other than the Shuttle fleet.
Otherwise, there is one opprtunity only to fix the problem, and that is durring the already scheduled (and full) 2008 service mission.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Brannigan: "What the hell is that thing?"
Kif: "It appears to be the mothership"
Brannigan: "Then what did we just blow up?"
Kif: "The Hubble Telescope"
Actually it would deserve to be orbiting a better world.
Is the HST in the same orbit as the satellite that China recently blew up?
Correct question: "Is any of the debris from the satellite China blew up now in an orbit that intersects the HST's?"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ah! Right. Now it makes sense. Sorry for the mix up.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
If you want to look at massive stars beyond z > 6 (ie, the First Stars), the majority of their radiation will arrive at Earth in the IR. That's one of the reasons the JWST works in the IR.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Mainly because NSA doesn't have any cameras up there. You're thinking of NGA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Have any other strong and uninformed opinions to share on matters of importance?
The new WFC3 will be installed in place of the now-inoperative Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument.
WFC3 replaces WFPC2.
COS (UV spectroscopy) replaces COSTAR (the original optics fix package; all the new instruments have this correction built in).
STIS will have an attempted repair to get it going again. It's a tough job, but we astro spectral-types have our fingers crossed.
"I believe it's the mothership, sir."
"Then what did we just blow up?"
"The Hubble Telescope."
that either you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about or you just hate NASA for some obscure reason. I also notice that you steered clear of commenting on the aerospace engineering research they do, which is top-notch.
I see "exploring the Moon and Mars," and the two rovers which have exceeded their life expectancy by a factor of 16 and gathered a huge amount of valuable data, don't count as "basic science" in your world. Fascinating.
+++ATH0
No where am I going to get those high res photos of the nudist beaches.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
All right, who the fuck modded a perfectly good Mystery Science Theatre 3000 joke as "troll?"
Unless you are pouring it in a war at a billion a day...
I forget, are we Oceana or Eurasia this time???
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I may be out of date here - but aren't spy satellites in highly ellipical orbits so they can get down low and actually resolve objects the size of vehicles in the visable wavelength? The problem with this is relatively short lifespans due to actually touching atmosphere at the low point of the orbit - which also prevents them from using large solar arrays for power (air resistance in the far upper atmosphere would be enough to require heavy supports for the arrays). They need relatively large amounts of fuel to stay in their orbits.
Also notice how the anony-coward did not address the encryption downlink. All he did was stress that all the data is stored at some website.
What ARE they doing on Hubble?
Also, because of the atmosphere, from the ground, we cannot observe all the infrared wavelengths that James Webb will be able to.
:(
But even with ground-based AO and JWST, we will have no access to the UV after Hubble signs off. Although Hubble doesn't do a lot of UV imaging (see GALEX for that), the UV spectroscopy from it has taught us a fantastic amount about the composition, motion, and physical conditions of tons of astronomical objects including nearby interstellar gas and hot stars as well as distant active regions inside the cores of galaxies and the tenuous filaments of intergalactic gas that make up the cosmic web.
These kinds of studies will be impossible to do from the ground and JWST will be no help.
Funny, NASA hasn't had problems funding the next generation of space telescope development, even with all of Bush's dealings.
Hell, all they have to do is make one capable of looking down at Earth and they'll have all the money they never needed.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Also notice how the anony-coward did not address the encryption downlink. All he did was stress that all the data is stored at some website.
...and Wikipedia has an article as well.
5 .html (abstracts and general info)
m l (for detail down to the second)
From what I could gather doing a simple web search, the Hubble downlink comes down to Goddard Space Flight Center via the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). It looks as if they have a web site...
http://msp.gsfc.nasa.gov/tdrss/oview.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TDRSS
So, unless one can hack into the TDRSS system, I guess you're out of luck in getting the raw telemetry stream from the Observatory. As for the encryption, I would imagine it would come from a requirement that all commands to and all information received from Hubble would have a single point of origin, namely Goddard, and that encryption is to prove the link is valid. After all, you wouldn't want someone else commanding the satellite to do something that could damage it (like point it toward the Sun, for example).
What ARE they doing on Hubble?
As for what is being observed with HST, another simple web search provided the two following links:
http://www-int.stsci.edu/~inr/thisweek1/previous1
http://www.stsci.edu/observing/weekly_timeline.ht
It's not that difficult, people.
"While HST's science capacity is diminished with the loss of ACS, HST lives on and will continue to produce world-class science..."
:(
With all due respect, that statement does not jive with dozens of images posted on your organization's site (http://hubblesite.org/). I'm no rocket scientist, but I did notice that at least 90% of the images in Gallery section are labeled "ACS", "Advanced Camera for Surveys", and other terms that imply most of the current content comes from the ACS. I guess "world-class science" is restricted to the invisible spectrum until Sept 2008?
Sincerely,
A Concerned Scientist
They could have stayed completely transparent by signing each transaction with a NASA private key. That would allow only operators to command, and everybody else to watch.
PKI is well known, and is proven mathematically. The only reason to encrypt is to hide from "Eve"... Us.
Hubble is just one thing that space exploration have provided marginal benefits for us, other than unintended consequences of new materials discovered while doing the research.
It provided unfathomable, invaluable insight to our own universe - take note of this, the universe word here is not some metaphor, synonym, acronym or any crap for anything - it is the REAL thing, what we exist in.
while squandering hoards of taxpayer dollars for crap that not worth, you nasa can neglect maybe the single scientifically most profitable thing that you have ever been able to produce ?
go fucking fix it now
Read radical news here
Te Hubble is a great piece of equipment that has ended its useful life. It is basically a carcass, a few batteries, computers and chips and optics. The chips are burnt, the computers are obsolete, the batteries are dead and the optics are screwed up since day one. Yes, it can be fixed. You only need to build the parts and send them in a shuttle. But since you need to send a shuttle to that orbit, in a dangerous mission that has no other objectives tha n fixing the Hubble, why don't we send a whole new telescope? Think about the numbers: - A mission to replace the Hubble costs about the same as a mission to fix it, but is less risky as complex spacewalks are not necessary. - Success is more certain, as launching a complete unit has better success chances than attempting to fix something in orbit. There is a probability that a mission to fix the existing telescope would not be successful, and in that case we would end up without the Hubble and without a replacement. - Building a new scope, similar to the Hubble, would be negligible in cost. All the design is done, the machinery is already built, many pieces already exist and it's not like the chips are expensive (all the expensive parts are already scheduled for replacement in the servicing mission). The optics are the only really expensive part to duplicate. And since the optics on the Hubble are less than perfect, it can't be said that building a new mirror is a waste of time, actually most astronomers concur that if building a new mirror to replace the one in the Hubble was feasible, it should be done. - End result: a superior telescope. Not only the optics would be greatly improved, but other parts not scheduled for repair could be improved with the experience and knowledge gained since the Hubble's launch. The only reason not to launch a new telescope similar to Hubble instead of fixing the existing one is politics: obtaining funding approvals to fix an existing piece of equipment is much easier than getting a new telescope approved, even if the cost and risk is lower for the later.
And building a second hubble wouldn't cost a fraction of what building the original one did. If no design changes were made, building a second unit would cost just millions (and they could get the mirror right on the second try). Besides, most technology used has been comoditized since (electronic gyroscopes, microprocessors, high cycle batteries, etc.) so building a new hubble would probably cost little more than building the spares needed. Given than a new launch mission might be doable without using the shuttle (the most expensive transport known to man) and even if the shuttle is used, it should be a much less expensive mission (lower orbit as the hubble2 could include propulsion to get to its orbit, and no dangerous spacewalks needed). All that, and you end up with a superior telescope to the one already up there.
my shiny new low cost ($300) 8" reflector
Oh, c'mon, if it's a great telescope, at least pimp it here. Amazon link with associates id welcomed.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
“There is sufficient light for those who desire to see, & there is sufficient darkness for those of a contrary disposition.”
That’s normally attributed to Pensees 149, but in all the lists of his Pensees, I see something differnet written. <shrug> it’s the one I like.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
WFC3/UVis is a clear step down on high-resolution imaging because the 40 mas pixels of WFC3 are larger than ACS/HRC and will undersample the PSF. It's an even larger step down on wide-field survey work because its throughput and field of view are both markedly inferior to the ACS/WFC (factors of 2/3 and 1/2 respectively). Completing a survey of the same area and depth with WFC3/UVIS will require 3 times as many orbits. Can anybody imagine the TAC approving 1800 orbits on something like COSMOS or the UDF?
This post brought to you by an astronomer who's procrastinating on rewriting his ACS-based HST proposal.
Microsoft delenda est!
We'll be pining for more of those amazing images until the James Webb launches in 2013.
You'll be pining a lot longer than that. The James Webb telescope will operate in the infrared spectrum. It won't take "visible" pictures, although the pictures can probably be colorized afterwards.
The good thing is that it doesn't matter! Tomorrow you'll be something else! As long as there is some vague enemy that can't really be defeated, everyone is happy.
c++;
that you're one of those imbeciles who believes the Moon landings were fake.
As for Amtrak, we need a reliable, cheap, fast national rail system, if for no other reason than rail travel is much more efficient than either automobile or airplane travel. Unfortunately, Amtrak has been the victim of bad management and underfunding for many, many years.
+++ATH0
Hi Creepy, good to see people reading the thread even though it got
swatted down with a -1, Troll. As far as the AC is concerned, he is
just feeding us the official line here.
Regarding the encryption angle, again you're right Creepy,
nothing that goes on between Hubble and ground control needs to be
a secret and a cryptographic checksum would have been enough to secure
message authenticity. There is definitely no need whatsoever for encryption
here unless somebody (@NASA) wanted to screen the data first before it gets
released.
No dice, AC.
Do you realize how long it took to build the HST? They don't come off the shelves at k-mart, not even the parts of it would. It's an extremely complex system, likely more complex than anything 90% of the /. population has worked on. As such, construction, assembly & testing would take a SIGNIFICANT amount of time.
This time frame coupled with that of the James Webb's 2013 launch date make the servicing mission more economical when you consider the entire benefit. (ie 4+ years of continued HST production for 1 billion US$ vs. MAYBE a couple years of service (from a new Hubble) + 1 billion US$)
Aren't most of the images we look at false-color anyways?
Hubble is not set up for serial production. Sure, they can learn a lot from the design of that telescope. But a new space telescope would still have to be a new project with new people, new contractors, new technology that needs to be evaluated and tested, a partially new design that has to be fully tested, etc. They will have to do all the new things and redo almost all of the work that the Hubble project did. It will not be cheap.
Sure, the over-the-shelf hardware will probably cost like 1/10 of the original Hubble hardware, but that hardly matters when you're only going to produce one unit.
I knew it! We should have purchased the extended service agreement. Just as the warranty runs out it breaks.
Actually they could probably fix it for 20X MORE than putting up a replacement knowing how NASA works ;)
FragHARD or don't frag at all
Well, I have a sneaking suspicion that there's military activity going on there. Im not one to spout "i saw teh UFOS" or some of the wacko-shit.
I betcha hubble's a testbed for sat-killers and laser weapontry, along with other tests I cant think of right now. Also, with the right frequency, couldnt the hubble pierce water to "see" submarines? It'd be nice for a high bandwidth viewing of a sub for military data, but Hubble claims they cant aim it as the Earth (yeah right).
I don't really think that's the case there. _They_ have in effect a virtually
limitless budget and they could easily build and launch themselves a
dedicated satellite that does exactly what they need it to do. If you don't
already know about it, get Celestia at sourceforge and then get one of the
satellite add-on packages for it. If you load that up you'll see there are in
effect more "military" satellites up there than civilian ones and some of them
have really peculiar orbits.
With amateur astronomers and other sat hobbyists monitoring orbiting objects
I don't think it wouldn't do for them to hijack such a prominent piece of
hardware as especially the sat people could at least detect the amount of
tdrss traffic from Hubble and they'd have to find more excuses for the orbit
monitoring people if they moved the satellite.
I don't know for sure _what_ they are hiding from us but I do know the _why_
of NASA secrecy especially when it comes to screening what should be completely
innocous data like Hubble images: Whatever is potentially out there could
be paradigm shattering and they certainly don't need that.
---I don't really think that's the case there. _They_ have in effect a virtually
limitless budget and they could easily build and launch themselves a
dedicated satellite that does exactly what they need it to do. If you don't
already know about it, get Celestia at sourceforge and then get one of the
satellite add-on packages for it. If you load that up you'll see there are in
effect more "military" satellites up there than civilian ones and some of them
have really peculiar orbits.
Well, Celestia isnt terribly good in my opinion for correcting all the kepelerian elements. I prefer orbitron, as it also controls my rotors. (I am a ham who's in satellite). With orbitron, it also tries to narrow out freq's for those "hidden spysats". My worry is that the spysats are uwb or crazy-channel shifting (well, multiple bands sifting).
---With amateur astronomers and other sat hobbyists monitoring orbiting objects
I don't think it wouldn't do for them to hijack such a prominent piece of
hardware as especially the sat people could at least detect the amount of
tdrss traffic from Hubble and they'd have to find more excuses for the orbit
monitoring people if they moved the satellite.
I wonder, is the ISS in the same boat? Is it encrypted links to/from earth?
---I don't know for sure _what_ they are hiding from us but I do know the _why_
of NASA secrecy especially when it comes to screening what should be completely
innocous data like Hubble images: Whatever is potentially out there could
be paradigm shattering and they certainly don't need that.
Well, it could be as simple if they didnt really get to the moon. They'd have to keep the data to themselves, and by that means controlling all ways to "see the moon". What would be neat would be if there was a detection of ETIs.. Then again, it would happen never the less.
I just brought up Celestia because it visualizes the situation "military" vs. "civilian" sats best.
4 32232 "Ask Slashdot: Are There Images of the Lunar Landers from Orbit?"
Regarding the monitoring of satellite transmissions... I wonder if there is maybe somwhere out there
someone who is "tuned" into Hubble if only to analyze the traffic? I'm sure they're not using
something "shifty" like frequency hopping or UWB to draw people's attention.
"I wonder, is the ISS in the same boat? Is it encrypted links to/from earth?"
I don't know a 100% for sure but I would bet money on it. ISS does have a ham station with packet radio
caps but that wont used be for "official business". Just think of what would happen if amateurs picked
up exclamations like "My God! This thing is HUGE where did THAT come from?"
--"Well, it could be as simple if they didnt really get to the moon. They'd have to keep the data to themselves, and by that means controlling all ways to "see the moon". What would be neat would be if there was a detection of ETIs.. Then again, it would happen never the less."--
There should be two interesting man-made objects to be seen on the moon... a moon buggy and an US flag. It seems that
there are no pictures to be found of them not even taken from moon orbit http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/26/0
But then as we all know NASA lost 700 boxes of the footage from the "first" moon landing.
Oh and about the ETs.. most science fiction rotates about the "Take me to your leader" fantasy of hovering over
the White House or landing on the roof-top of the United Nations. What I suppose they really should be worried about are
the ETs that completely _ignore them_ and instead talk to you directly.
Have any other strong and uninformed opinions to share on matters of importance?
I have plenty. [grin]
However, in my defense, the sentence "The Shuttle fleet is under the gun big time to get the ISS finished before it is decommisioned." is ambiguous.
"The Shuttles are under the gun big time to get the ISS finished before the fleet is decommissioned." would have been a better way of phrasing it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Yes, it can take time. How much time? Certainly not as long as it took building the original Hubble. Given that the design is already done and most machinery needed to build the scope, and even several actual parts, are already made, probably the time will be ruled by how long it takes to polish a new main mirror. It is not unlikely that it can be ready in less than three years from start, probably two. And what's three years? The universe is not going anywhere. The hubble is, and sending a repair mission IS on a tight schedule, but launching a new scope is not nearly as constrained.
If it were set up for serial production, one could be built in a week. But nobody is asking for that. With makin gone in two or three years, and testing it for an additional year it would be enough. Since the Hubble is 75% gone now, waiting two years or three for a new view won't make much difference. And the end results will. And you think that the repair parts (which comprise a good portion of the actual hubble, including most of the electrical system, the stabilization system, most computers and now the camera) are off the shelf and need not testing at all? They need probably as much testing as the whole scope. With the difference that they cannot be tested in an integral way, since the rest of the scope is up there in orbit.
Don't forget at the Hubble was launched aboard a space Shuttle, not a 'regular' rocket.