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Final Repair Mission To Extend Hubble's Life
necro81 writes "The NYTimes has an in-depth piece describing an upcoming shuttle mission, scheduled for next August, to make a final service call to the Hubble Space Telescope. After the Columbia accident and the scheduled shuttle decommission in 2010, additional service trips to the telescope were off the table. The resulting hue and cry from scientists, legislators, and the public forced NASA to reconsider. Next August, if all goes well, Atlantis will grab Hubble, replace its aging gyros, attempt to revive the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and install a new camera and spectrograph. The telescope could then continue doing science well into the next decade."
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
The Hubble has to be NASA's greatest success. And where Apollo was a triumph in engineering, Hubble is a triumph in pure science.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I wonder if those are lamb or beef gyros...
(Yes I know it is bad.)
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Nonsense. COBE was far more significant. There's much more to science than pretty pictures!
In my early years in physics I worked on shuttles, and then on environmental cleanups and nu-cu-lar waste disposal. Many times I used Hubble as example of what we could do right in science: so often critics have said that they never see what good could come out of it. Hubble has made that entire line of "reasoning" disappear. SEEING the results, in the visible spectrum, FREELY available... Could we find something similar for this current emphasis in biophysics? C'mon slashdot, let's take science to the masses!
You're not helping. There had only been two trolls before your post.
Are the advantages of having Hubble outside the atmosphere still worth the expense? I'd rather see NASA spending their money on Mars.
I thought I had heard that new ground-based telescope technology has largely made the benefits of the old Hubble obsolete. Does anyone know anything more specific on that?
...in one final mission, perhaps with an unmanned robotic/remote controlled plain old cylinder-shaped rocket vehicle, to go up and fetch the Hubble, load it inside the tube (remember the old James Bond movie "You Only Live Twice"), and bring it down safely using parachutes, as cheaply as possible, so the Hubble can then be displayed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Surely some rich multi-billionaire mofo could cough up the bucks to fund such a mission.
NASA will try to get as much positive spin out of Hubble as it can :-)
...get placed in orbit around the moon. I wonder if it would result in better imaging capability or not.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That reference just made my day. That was exactly what I thought when I first saw the summary. It seems others have taken it to be a reference to Portal, which is good too, but you made me very happy, sir.
Not sure it was a cry from scientists, legislators, and the public as much as it was a cry from a small number of people with everyone else going along with what they read.
IIRC we cannot, by treaty, just let the Hubble's orbit decay like Skylab & Mir, we need to do a de-orbit burn and drop it in the Pacific, or some other relatively safe place. The problem was this, is that the Hubble has no rocket engines on board, so we need to send something up there to attach an engine.
That would be a complicated robotic mission, but there is a further complication... Once enough gyros fail, it will start to tumble. That would make a servicing mission near impossible. (you could no longer just grab it.)
So once NASA decides that we need to go anyway, why bother to de-orbit it? Servicing Mission 3B was in 2002, if they can get another 6 years out of SM4 that will get them to 2014. If NASA is serious about replacing the shuttle, they should be able to get another manned craft into low-earth orbit by then, even if it is using an off-the-shelf launch system,
"The Device NASA Is Leaving Behind" into context. (It being the last Slashdot story in the Space section.)
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
hue
Color or shade of color; tint; dye
hew
to complain about
(in before "there are no editors")
: "If that wasn't the mother ship, what the hell did we just blow up?"
: "The hubble telescope."
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
One more Hubble servicing mission... but the 1.5 billion dollar AMS (Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer) won't be launched to ISS because there aren't enough remaining Shuttle launches.
Hubble's been fantastic and all, but all the furor, angst and money could have been spent on launching an entirely new telescope into space by now.
While I'm glad that the Hubble is going to be repaired, after reading yesterday's article about the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) that looks like it won't get delivered to the ISS due to a lack of available shuttle missions, I'm no longer sure it's the right thing to do. Seeing as the AMS took 500 physicists 12 years to build and cost $1.5 billion, and that it's capable of doing new and amazing science, I think it deserves a chance. The Hubble has already been up their for years and will be replaced in 2013 by the James Webb Space Telescope anyway. The AMS has no replacement; not launching it would be worse than not repairing Hubble.
Are the control electronics associated with the gyros failing? What gyro technology are they using?
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This might sound naive, but what about attaching this thing to the ISS? Sure would make maintenance a lot more easier, with all those regular flights and round-the-clock human presence.
Is there anything fundamentally incompatible with the design of the Hubble and the ISS? (orbit, need to rotate, etc.?)
What Science does the space station actually advance, and how is it meaningful to us?
From what I know of, most of our useful scientific advances from the space program have been because of trying to get out into space. I honestly don't know of a single advance made from actually being out there. We know a bit more about the planets surface, and that there aren't any living sentient beings in our region of space. However, we also know that its hugely impractical to relocate to these planets as well, and that even if we did, we wouldn't be safe from our own sun.
Knowledge is power and I don't dispute this, but other than what we've gained in making these attempts, have we really practically applied anything we currently know? Or is it really just the practice that benefits us?
No, I am not an English major. My posts are subject to typos and incorrect grammar. Do not expect perfection.
I bet like all repairmen they'll charge ridiculously large travel expenses.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Since, you know, that money would have no better use than to get a new museum piece... I support funding science, but something like this would not be science, it would just be a tremendous waste of money.
I disagree. If the Hubble could be brought back and put in the Smithsonian, then some child might become inspired by seeing it up close and personal, and choose to pursue science, astronomy or space exploration instead of choosing to grow up to become an advertising marketeer, scam artist or drug dealer.
Funny, last time I checked the shops were full of special creams to protect people from harmful UV radiation when they go outdoors.
No sig today...
Write your Congressmen, both House and Senate, of the importance to science, prestige for America, and the space program. Feel free to list other concerns you have but give NASA and in particular the AMS high marks so that it stands out. Do not mention the war or the expenditure of the funds on it, that will only get you written off. Instead stay positive.
Then get your friends to send emails and the like. You can use wikipedia for the links to your own Congressmen. You might try writing into the opinion section of your local paper, again focusing on the positives for us as a country and even as a species (just don't drag the war into it as people will focus on it and your real message will be lost)
Hubble was saved because people focused on it. The AMS is not nearly known as well but if portrayed in a positive light and put on the same stage as Hubble then congress might just spend all that wasted earmark money on science instead of making monuments to living politicians
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I'm doing science and I'm still alive.
I feel fantastic and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.
Still alive.
everyday is another shooter.
Don't you just adore absolutely arbitrary use of words?
Hubble is the only major accomplishment that's worth its salt nasa did in the last 20 years. I get amazed even when discussions of scrapping it come up or some people actually foolishly propose it. what hubble brought to human civilization dwarfs even moon landing accomplishment. and im no astronomer.
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(He says after getting a new radiator for my 1995 Saturn Station Wagon.)
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Actually, most of those things you list were a team effort from a variety of observatories, and more important, the astrophysicists crunching and interpreting the data. For example, I'm pretty sure the Spitzer had a much greater role to play in verifying accellerated expansion than the Hubble did.
But Hubble has still had some immutable contributions to astronomy, especially with regards to its ability to resolve fine structures of galaxies and star forming regions, and of the early universe. Its greatest feat has been the Hubble Ultra-deep Field exposure, which shows details from the earliest stages of the universe yet observed.
And to answer the reply above in this same post, the Nobel prize was given to a group of researchers who used COBE, but that does not place COBE's importance over that of Hubble. COBE was built with a fairly specific set of observations in mind, and the Nobel Prize reflects that work. Hubble was built as a general purpose observatory of oustanding capability, and it continues as such.
Full disclosure -- I work for NASA, on HST. Servicing Mission 4 is going to be pretty busy: In addition to the three things mentioned in the summary (installing COS and WFC3, and repairing ACS), we're also going to be repairing STIS, replacing some thermal blankets, installing new batteries, etc. It's going to be a busy 5 days up there. As for some of the other comments on here: John Mather (the PI for COBE) is a friend of mine, and even he wouldn't claim that COBE did better science than Hubble. They're different things, and both have done fantastic science. Further, I would point out that NASA has had a vast array of scientific successes, including the rovers on Mars, Deep Impact, the Spitzer Space Telescope, Chandra, etc. etc. Just because the media gets more interested when something goes "boom"... sheesh. Oh, and those of you inclined to give advice to NASA about how to engineer... Talk to me after you've put a telescope in space (no, seriously, after you've done that, I want to talk to you!)
Hurra! for the venerable Hubble. There's no replacement yet so it's only wise to keep it. In ten years there will be a replacement. Plans have existed since 10 years ago at NASA.
So let's face it: COBE is fantastic science, but it means absolutely nothing to most people. They don't know what it does, they don't understand or care about the science behind it, and probably assume it's just a waste of money. HST is fantastic science, but people are dazzled by pretty pictures and can catch a glimpse into just how it's enabling scientists to do fantastic things. It seizes the imagination, and NASA can only achieve what the public's imagination is willing to fund (to borrow a phrase from Jack Black's funny anti-piracy PSA, "No money, no rocket sauce...").
I'd like to see the HST recovered somehow and put on display. Sure, that'd be expensive (and may be impractical to bring back down even if a replacement was deployed on the same mission), but it's an icon that panders to the public interest. That's worth every penny IMHO when the budget for space exploration is facing the ax, even if it's less-than-pragmatic from a purely scientific point of view.