Final Repair Mission To Extend Hubble's Life 125
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."
No way (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Other than the Apollo missions... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Advantages of Hubble still worth it? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, the fact that our atmosphere is opaque to UV? If you want to do UV observations, and in particular UV spectroscopy, then going above the atmosphere is the only way to do it. Nothing on the ground will *ever* be able to observe in the UV.
Similar considerations apply to the mid- and far-IR -- the Spitzer space telescope can access wavebands that are simply not visible from the ground.
Re:Advantages of Hubble still worth it? (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, the atmosphere isn't really as transparent as it looks once you get outside the visible spectrum, and that's where 50% (a statistic made up on the spot) of astronomy breakthroughs are.
Future scopes in space are likely to be infrared (Webb), ultraviolet, radio and x-ray specific. Plus, adaptive optics are still only a band-aid(R) compared to viewing outside the atmosphere.
Re:No way (Score:3, Informative)
From the XKCD Store page [xkcd.com]:
Re:Other than the Apollo missions... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The kind of science we all need (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will it really be the last trip? (Score:4, Informative)
They seem to be thinking ahead, almost like it was their job or something. : )
Re:Other than the Apollo missions... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mixed feelings (Score:3, Informative)
Although there's indeed a great value of having a dedicated IR scope up there, I think that astronomers would agree that keeping the Hubble in orbit will be a very good thing, not to mention the obvious benefits of having two scopes versus one (on the other hand, if it's cheaper to build another Hubble that indeed does fulfill all of the important roles of the current one, than I agree that NASA should by all means pursue that route)