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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.
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.
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!
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.
Then let's see you do it.
You make it sound as if it was simple.
Of course, relative speed from the Shuttle to Hubbles is tiny.
But to match their relative speed from the ground is still pretty hard. Getting the shuttle from zero MPH to 17,000+MPH within inches of the Hubble so that their own relative speed nears zero for a dock is by all means, pretty neat stuff.
And for that, I go Oooh.
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!
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Do you have a U.S. government that I can borrow for awhile?
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Well, the historical evidence confirms they're right, and you're wrong. Yes, you really do have to sit on top of enough propellent to push that massive shuttle straight up into the air and accelerate it to 17000 mph, with pinpoint precision. And sometimes, it blows up and everybody dies.
"flying through space at 17,200 MPH, 300 miles above the Earth's surface. " Not impressive.
Then let's see you do it.
Give him 45 years, a multi-billion dollar budget, proven launch and flight platforms with 20+ years of successful flights, a number of catastrophic failures to learn from and a 50 odd professional test pilots and I'm sure he could do better than dock with a satellite in orbit.
NASA does more impressive stuff than this every day, and could be doing even more stuff if they were better managed and funded.
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Sure! Take mine. It's not being used for its original purpose right now anyway.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
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.
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They didn't spend a fortune putting the Hubble in a higher, more remote orbit for laughs. Lower orbits get more drag from the atmosphere. Anywhere close to the IIS and the Hubble's very delicate instruments and optics would be degraded by all the outgassing from the IIS, the rocket exhaust from visiting vessels. And all the bits and pieces that have fallen off the IIS over the years would be a big hazard. Would take just one bolt moving at high speed to smash a billion dollar mirror.