NASA Seeks Proposals For Hubble Robotic Servicing

hcg50a writes "SpaceFlight Now has an article about NASA asking for proposals to mount a robotic mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Such a Hubble-servicing mission would occur toward the end of calendar year 2007. If you like politics mixed with your spaceflight, you can read NASA Administrator O'Keefe's speech in which the announcement was made."

More info here

[Saluton_Mondo]

BBC is also following the story [bbc.co.uk]... IMHO if we have the means, then Hubble should be saved.

Re:Hope this works but...

[acceber]

I hope they are able to service it, but I think they might be more concerned with how its going to fall.

Once the Webb telescope is launched ~2010, the Hubble will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere around that time, depending on the impact of the Sun on the upper atmosphere.
It is expected to burn up on re-entry although the main mirror probably won't which could result in casualties.

To have a controlled landing, NASA were planning to attach a propulsion module to the satellite - but that requires a servicing mission which is of course currently the issue being hotly debated. And it seems NASA doesn't even have the technology to do that, only Russia does.

Alert! Amazon-link. Do not click.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a non-evil link [barnesandnoble.com] to the book.

Re:Hey, forgetting something?

[techcntr]

> Latency to LEO isn't more than about 300ms (I remember that Sattelite internet access has at least a 250ms latency, and IIRC the sats for that are higher up.

All NASA comms for this misison will go through TDRS. The major delay for TDRS comms isn't the radio waves, it's the processing on each end. Through TDRS, the communications delay is on the order of 2-3 seconds.

> I mean, it's not nearly as nifty, but it's also pretty fool-proof compared to sending up an AI.

Actually if you read closely O'Keefe specifically says they aren't looking at autonomous approaches (except for the docking). During HST servicing everything is going to be teleoperated. There's no way HST could be serviced autonomously, the technology isn't there yet.

Re:Extending the technology

[Short Circuit]

Uh, capsules were reusable. You slapped on a new ablative heat shield, among other things, and then it was ready to go.

NASA already tried and failed at this

[Animats]

NASA threw $300 million at the Flight Telerobotic Servicer [astronautix.com] project in the 1990s. That project had roughtly the same spec this one does - a 4-year project to develop a remotely controlled robot for satellite maintenance.

Total failure. Not even a ground-based prototype. Lots of studies and papers on components, but no real results. It's so NASA.

The project manager on that project is still on the NASA payroll. That, too, is so NASA.