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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

In short, the reports of Hubble's demise are GREATLY exaggerated. She will continue to produce world-class science and incredible images. While we are disappointed with the (apparent) loss of ACS, HST will live on well into the next decade.

You can view one of our press releases on this here: http://hubblesite.org/acs/.

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Webb in 2013?

[Maury Markowitz]

Riiiiight. Like Shuttle in '79? Or Alpha in '95? Or how about Hubble in '86? *sigh*

and yet...

[Lord_Slepnir]

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.

The Beeb Disagrees...

[drinkypoo]

From The Beeb [bbc.co.uk]:

Hubble is due to receive a new camera during a planned servicing mission by space shuttle in 2008.

This should recover all of the capability lost in the latest failure.

"The successful completion of [the shuttle mission] and insertion of Wide Field Camera-3 (WFC3) will take us fully back to not only where we are now, but where we want [the telescope] to be in the future," said David Leckrone, Nasa's senior project scientist on Hubble.

So uh, WTF? Who is right? Will this camera be replaced in 2008, or not?

Re:Not really . . .

[UnknowingFool]

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.

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.

Re:and yet...

[susano_otter]

Dude, there are horrible genocides happening in Africa. North Korea holds Seoul hostage while it builds nuclear weapons and supplies terrorist networks. World temperatures are rising at the same time as world energy resources are dwindling. Ten thousand other horrors are playing out world-wide. And you want to spend the Iraq war funds on telescopes to watch a robot land on Mars?

Who's got the priority problems?

Re:No time in the upcoming servicing mission

[Professor_UNIX]

I suppose it's INCONCEIVABLE to change the schedule, eh?

This isn't "Armageddon". They need time to certify and train the astronauts for making those repairs and that takes a long time.

What does NASA

[StarKruzr]

have to do with dropping bombs on people?

(hint: nothing)

Re:Webb in 2013?

[Dirtside]

Well, you've named three NASA projects that ended up running late. Now, can you name three which went live as originally scheduled?

Now that you've done that, can you explain your point?

You have just confirmed

[StarKruzr]

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.

Re:Looks like my wallpaper won't be changing for a

[Genda]

True, but most of Hubbles images are in false colour. All the nebulae and supernova remnants for example are too faint to be seen by the naked eye excepts as greyish clouds, so the iconic images seen on APOD are actually colourised IR or UV images.

That's not exactly true... it totally depends on the image and which Hubble camera took the picture. For instance the pictures of mars and the other planets are pretty much spot on (when they haven't been color enhanced to show otherwise invisible physical details.)

It turns out that when objects get really faint, the only cones (color sensing neurons in your retina) that still function are green sensing cones... so faint nebulae and galaxies tend to appear pale green even through rather large telescopes. The red cones in our eyes are just not sensitive enough to pick up the deep reds of ionized hydrogen and sulphur. If you look at picture taken by amateur astronomers using standard color film, of RGB filters, you get true color pictures as a reference for what the true colors of deep sky objects would be if we had eyes sensitive enought to see them.

A common practive for Hubble pictures, is to filter pictures according to ionized chemical species, with low energy ions tending towards the red end of the spectrum, and the higher energy species towards the blue. The results are beautiful full spectrum images that accurately represent energy levels in a given nebulae or galaxy (if not the visually accurate colors.) This is typically true for both visible and infrared images.

Genda
"I am more that a little amazed that at the same time a comprehensive theory that describes the fundaments of the universe (CDT - Causal Dynamical Triangulations)seems to be showing some interesting promise... we as a people (specifically the good people of Kentucky) feel it's necessary to build a $27,000,000 Museum celebrating the 6,000 year old earth/universe complete with people and dinosaurs living together concurrently (as though the Flintstones were a documentary...) If nothing else, we're an interesting lot."