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Atlantis Links Up To Hubble For Repairs
An anonymous reader writes "Space Shuttle Atlantis has finally caught up with the Hubble Space Telescope after following it for several hours. The 'link up' between the Space Shuttle and Hubble was a very delicate one as the two were flying through space at 17,200 MPH, 300 miles above the Earth's surface. The robotic arm of the shuttle grappled the telescope at 1:14 PM EDT today. The telescope will be latched to a high-tech Lazy Susan device known as the Flight Support System for the duration of the servicing work."
What about the supplies?
Is that like an epileptic version of a lazy susan? I don't even know how you make a typo like that without having some sort of seizure.
Do you mean "Lazy Susan"?
Why do these articles always tell us how difficult it was to do something in space because they are going so ridiculously fast? When taken relatively, they were practically sitting still while docking.
I know there are all kinds of other factors and I know it takes a lot of math to even get to the right orbit at the right time and speed to even see the Hubble, but after that, it ought to be relatively simple considering the lack of any unwanted or unexpected force on the crafts. I'm pretty sure it's much more difficult to land a jet on an air craft carrier, but I wouldn't know for sure.
This calls for trolling.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Do people just look for big numbers to sound impressive??
The important number is the relative speed between Hubble and the shuttle. From my very precise calculation it was zero.
So they're going 17,200mph relative to the surface of the Earth? How fast are they going relative to some arbitrarily fixed point in the universe? Relative to another galaxy, we're hurtling towards it at some million mph, so maybe count that in as well.
I am reaching for my pop can while we travel at over 1 million miles per hour. SUCCESS! POP CAN LINKUP COMPLETE!
Since it's the relative speed that's important. The speed figures are only of use for those that tracks the shuttle and the telescope.
Sometimes it's just baffling to see people goo "ooh" when someone states that they makes an extreme speed and then the people thinks that going that fast must be very dangerous.
In a way it is, but only if something crosses your path. But that's the same when you are on the ground too.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The 'link up' between the Space Shuttle and Hubble was a very delicate one as the two were flying through space at 17,200 MPH, 300 miles above the Earth's surface.
To make matters even worse, they were both traveling at around 558,000 MPH relative to the galaxy.
I used to bullseye wamprats in my T16 back home and they're not much bigger than the hubble
"flying through space at 17,200 MPH, 300 miles above the Earth's surface. "
Not impressive.
"flying through space at 17,200 MPH, 300 miles above the Earth's surface in opposirte directions."
Impressive.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The CANADARM, developed, built, and donated by CANADA, is the robotic ARM on the US Space Shuttle. Funny how it is referred to as the robotic arm in the US, and CANADARM everywhere else, especially in Kanada (eh!).
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0126120/canadaArm.htm
By the way: one of the only parts of the shuttle to work flawlessly so far...
Kanonymous Kanadian Koward (the other KKK!).
Would it be possible to drag the telescope and attach it to the space station.
Seems like it would be a lot easier to service. Not to mention that cool Canada arm could work on it for years to come for a fraction of the cost.
Hand over ownership to the international community and split the costs might also help.
She and I were standing on the earth, which was moving around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. We struggled to make our lips meet...
Bruce Perens.
Last fall during the run-up to the original launch date, NASA conducted their usual round of press briefings on this mission, 30 days prior to launch. The briefings included the usual information about the mission, the crew, the scheduled spacewalk work, etc.
In addition to those briefings typical for any shuttle flight, they conducted a "science briefing" to explain what the work of this servicing mission was going to do for the scientific capabilities of Hubble. In the briefing was an all-star cast of astronomical scientists:
Each of them made a short speech and then the rest of the briefing was turned over to questions from the press. I would encourage anyone with even a fleeting interest in science or astronomy to take the time to download and watch the entire briefing, as it is truly fantastic stuff they're talking about, and these guys do a great job of explaining it to regular people. Certainly science could use a bit of a pep talk after weathering the last 8 years of the Bush administration's hostility to science and objective truths.
In particular, the last person on the dais, Dr. Hammel, give an impassioned 10-minutes speech on the impact of Hubble on science and indeed on culture. It's an astonishing and beautiful statement on where we are in astronomical science and where we may be headed if this shuttle mission goes as planned. I'm surprised the press room didn't erupt in applause when she finished.
Dr. Hammel's speech starts at the 38:50 mark in the first half of the briefing that I've linked below. If you don't have time to watch the entire 90-minute briefing, at least watch her 10 minutes.
download page for first half of briefing
download page for second half of briefing
The above is adapted from an entry that I made to my personal blog back in September (not linked here). Sadly, I see that the above download links no longer work. I have not been able to find the briefing on Youtube, and the repeat briefings from a couple weeks ago did not include Dr. Hammel. FORTUNATELY, I did find most of Dr. Hammel's speech incorporated into a nice 5 minute video right here. Please check it out!
One simple rule for its versus it's
Under terrestrial conditions, there are all manner of random perturbations and ways that energy can couple into systems (i.e. make them smash) that flying high speed formation is tricky. It is even more serious at supersonic speed and that is why rocket staging is non-trivial and all the problems Space-X was having with rocket tests.
But in the vacuum of Earth orbital space, there is not much in the way of perturbations apart from the errant meteoroid, and flying formation is not big deal. Now getting the point of flying formation is a big deal as discovered by the Gemini crews on account of the Alice-in-Wonderland logic of orbital mechanics where thrusting forward (into a higher orbit) slows you down and retro thrusting (into a lower orbit) speed you up.
Just in the last 24 hours we got a story on Slashdot about the new 30 meter telescope being built. Given the cost to fix Hubble and the non-zero danger that is present, why are we even bothering with it any more? The new 30 meter telescope will have 100x the power of Hubble and allow us to do everything we ever wished, including make upgrades and repairs as needed - all less than for the cost of the launch to repair Hubble(The 30 meter telescope is projected to cost 700-800 million versus 1.3 billion for just one Shuttle launch).
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/13/2010241&from=rss
Hubble's already outclassed by Keck as well - so ground-based telescopes already make it almost entirely redundant.
http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa80/austolyso/motivation/1196539615059.jpg
There's a free (beer) spaceflight simulator available at http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html that lets you try these sorts of approaches.
"Firstly, the only way to match altitudes is with speeds - the faster you go, the higher up you go. ..."
That's only an issue if your drift time between velocity adjustments is an appreciable fraction of a quarter-orbit. For significantly shorter times the orbital mechanics of the goofy accelerated reference frame is no big deal.
This was delicate because the instrument they're linking up with is massive and fragile. No hard bumps during grabbing or thruster exhaust spraying the device is acceptable.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
" The 'link up' between the Space Shuttle and Hubble was a very delicate one as the two were flying through space at 17,200 MPH"
That's nothing, the linkup between me and my laptop was a very delicate one as we were both flying through space at roughly 67,000 MPH; 91,000,000 miles above the surface of the sun!
Throughout its history, NASA has seemed to feel that part of having "the right stuff" is taking incredible activities and achievements and making them incredibly boring. Even allowing for them being extra slow and careful, this represents the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people to exacting standards, and it deserves at least as much hype as the last Olympic opening ceremony. NASA manages to turn it into a bus ride.
I keep hearing about how all of these other ground based telescopes with adaptive optics are "better than Hubble", but I've yet to see a single one actually top the four pixel image Hubble made of Pluto. Let me know when any ground based telescope can actually resolve Pluto's surface features, and then I'll be a believer.
The thing is, adaptive optics have limitations. Hubble does not have them. Space based astronomy is a powerful asset.
Quite honestly, I think the whole debate over manned versus unmanned space flight is rather senseless. When I run for Senate as a Republican, I promise I will accuse Democrats of losing the space race and triple NASA's budget so that we have:
a) a second generation re-usable space plane... just because, it would be bad ass.
b) the constellation for long range moon, asteroid and mars missions that are manned.
c) I want f--- JIMO to be built. I want nuclear powered robot space craft flying all over the solar system. Let's go find out if there is life on Europa.
d) Fund a solar sail as well.
Doing all of that would have a space exploration budget of 50 billion a year. That is completely chump change compared to the overall US budget.
This is my sig.
We should be able, as a species, to deploy and fix satellites, because we depend on them so much at this point. We should be able to maintain working samples of the bleeding edge of our technology and reach. The money spent on space stuff doesn't just get ground up and burned as fuel; it pays for the development and upkeep of part of what keeps our technological civilization working.
We shouldn't forget subsistence farming and medieval tools, because they're always good techniques to have in a pinch and might come in useful. And we also shouldn't abandon the most forward edge of our capabilities, because at some point we'll need it. Even if we never go beyond the moon, or even much beyond high orbit.
Makes it a lot easier
We didn't see an accident with some nasa bling because of this bad use of units?
I have no idea how fast or how high you're talking about.
Don't forget, they're broadcasting the whole operation live on Nasa TV.
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
A slight correction: Ed Weiler is the _Associate_ Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, not the agency's overall Administrator. That post has been vacant since Michael Griffin resigned in January. You can see the organization structure here.
Personally, I'm expecting Mike Griffin to be replaced with Peter Griffin.