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Space Upgrades United States Science

Robot Helps NASA Refocus On Hubble 107

Posted by timothy from the use-more-helicopters-next-time dept.
The ailing Hubble telescope keeps refusing to die; jdoire points out this story at the Washington Post which reads in part "Largely because of the Canadian robot named 'Dextre,' NASA has gone in less than a year from virtually writing off the Hubble to embracing a mission that will cost between $1 billion and $1.6 billion and approach in complexity the hardest jobs the agency has ever undertaken." (We last mentioned Dextre back in August.)
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Robot Helps NASA Refocus On Hubble More

Robot Helps NASA Refocus On Hubble

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  • In Canada.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by euxneks ( 516538 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:13AM (#10812042)
    We make our astronauts. =)

  • Dextre's Laboratory (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Hatta ( 162192 )
    So today is a good day for science!

  • Engrish (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:21AM (#10812068)
    Canadian robot named 'Dextre'

    Known as 'Dexter' in the USA.

    • Re:Engrish (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, it would be Dextre in REAL english. Just like in actual english, it's centre, not center.
      • Not sure if this is proper or not, but I use "Centre" for an institution, as in "Centre for the Performing Arts", and "Center" for middle, as in "This doughnut has a hole in the center".
      • Excuse me. Last time I checked we were the current imperialistic power in the world. Hence, we get to make and/or break the language anyway we want...
  • It looks like Canada got Dexter right this time! Too bad they messed up with their version of Dexter's lab...

  • Robots and Hubble: a bad idea? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:42AM (#10812121)

    The Space Review has an article called "Robots and Hubble: a bad idea? [thespacereview.com]", which argues that repairing Hubble with robots is both risky and expensive.

    The article discusses two alternatives: "Alternative One: Bring back the shuttle" and "Alternative Two: Replace Hubble with spacecraft". Both alternatives would be expensive but with a better chance of high scientific value.

    Other people have proposed "Alternative Three: Replace Hubble with ground telescopes". NASA could give funding to the astronomy community to build a ground telescope with adaptive optics. It's not a perfect solution because Hubble can detect some wavelengths that ground telescopes cannot, but it's a very cost-effective solution and would be a good compromise until the next-generation space telescopes are launched. Alternative three would be low cost, high scientific value. The University of Arizona's $120 million Large Binocular Telescope is the world's most powerful optical telescope, with images about 10 times as sharp as the Hubble's.

    • Re:Robots and Hubble: a bad idea? (Score:5, Informative)

      by GekkePrutser ( 548776 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @06:07AM (#10812167)
      The article discusses two alternatives: "Alternative One: Bring back the shuttle" and "Alternative Two: Replace Hubble with spacecraft". Both alternatives would be expensive but with a better chance of high scientific value.

      Interesting article! However, I am a bit surprised the article doesn't mention that a replacement to the Hubble is already planned: The James Webb telescope. The only thing that one doesn't have and the Hubble does is a UV viewer (which can't be done on earth either due to the ozone layer). But apart from that it is a replacement for Hubble.

      • Wait just a second there... you're telling me that they're going to put a new telescope in space when it doesn't have the instrument that actually needs to be in space? That's just absurd -- please tell me they're at least adding it later!
        • The new telescope will be mostly infrared and infrared seems to also be blocked by the Earth's atmosphere (althrough not as badly as UV). The new telescope seems to be aimed at catching what the Hubble couldn't catch, as the Hubble seems to be only near-infrared.

      • Ozone Layer (Score:4, Funny)

        by Mark_MF-WN ( 678030 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @08:02AM (#10812421)
        I'll bet we can destroy the entire ozone layer for a fraction of the cost of one shuttle mission! Then we can use cheap ground-based telescopes to do UV imaging. And as an added benefit, it will kickstart the next stage of human mutation and evolution!
        • I'll bet we can destroy the entire ozone layer for a fraction of the cost....And as an added benefit, it will kickstart the next stage of human mutation and evolution!

          Which no doubt your thinking process is the first product.
      • I thought that I heard that James Webb telescope is primarily infrared. If so, its not at all the same thing as Hubble, although it has virtues of its own, it doesnt give us the same visible light capabilities as Hubble. I heard Webb does have some visible capability but it doesnt sound like it has as much as Hubble. It has an infrared viewer, which is quite different and will allow us to see through clouds of dust to say the centers of galaxies better, but it may not provide the same quality visible light

      • Re:Robots and Hubble: a bad idea? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Martin Blank ( 154261 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @01:01PM (#10813628) Homepage Journal
        They're not even close in capabilities. The Webb Telescope was meant to complement, not replace. Consider the differences in the instruments:

        Current Hubble instruments [stsci.edu]:
        • Observatory (Calibration, Focal Plane, Telescope, Cross-Instrument Issues)
        • ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys)
        • FGS (The Fine Guidance Sensors)
        • NICMOS (Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer)
        • STIS (Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph)
        • WFPC2 (The Wide Field Planetary Camera 2)

        Initial James Webb Telescope instruments [nasa.gov]:
        • Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam)
        • Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI)
        • Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec)
        • Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS)

        The only real overlap is in Near-Infrared. It's important that the Hubble be saved, as the Webb telescope has virtually no non-IR capabilities.
    • Hopefully the shotguns don't get in the robots' way. Seriously, it is a shame that the United States has allowed our space program to decline to the point where we have to outsource stuff like this. Back in the 70's, I would have expected that by now we would have been able to have a passing space crew on their way to the moon base stop by to do repairs. And this isn't just on one political party. Both of them have basically lost any vision or passion for space. We are too concerned with who we can bribe w
      • Seriously, it is a shame that the United States has allowed our space program to decline to the point where we have to outsource stuff like this.

        You call this outsourcing, I call it international collaboration, which is what the scientific community needs more of. Wake up, the cold war is over, you're not competing with anyone anymore. The more countries work together, the more will be achieved.

        • The more countries work together, the more will be achieved.

          You're assuming that all countries will keep their space agencies' funding at past levels. In practice, this does not happen. Every country expects the rest to be able to shoulder some of their burden for them without noticing. Everyone cuts back, and you end up with a completely anemic worldwide space program.

          So in practice it is more like outsourcing than it is like collaboration.

    • Re:Robots and Hubble: a bad idea? (Score:5, Informative)

      by RayBender ( 525745 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @09:45AM (#10812727) Homepage
      Other people have proposed "Alternative Three: Replace Hubble with ground telescopes".

      I am an astronomer, and I've worked on AO systems, and I can tell you that I'd rather have Hubble than all the AO-corrected Kecks in the world. AO sounds like a good idea, but in the end the data you get out is hard to calibrate, and unreliable. The problem is that the properties of the atmospheric turbulence keep changing, making it hard for the AO to keep up. The best AO-systems available today achieve maybe 70% of the performance of a diffraction limited system such as a telescope in space. But the remaining 30% of the light goes into a big "halo" that has all sorts of complicated image structure in it.

      Then there is the fact that the field of view that you get with an AO system is much, much smaller that you'd get with Hubble. And then there are issues with higher thermal background, etc. A while back HST published a light-curve of an eclipsing extra-solar planet - something like that could never be done from the ground (i.e. with the same precision).

      The University of Arizona's $120 million Large Binocular Telescope is the world's most powerful optical telescope, with images about 10 times as sharp as the Hubble's.

      No, not really. LBT will not produce sharp images in the visible, at least not with any AO system that one could build today. In the near-Infrared LBT will still be subject to all the disadvantages inherent in AO systems, and in addition will have the problems associated with interferometry, since it is actually two telescopes cobbled together to act as one. LBT will, if it ever works, and press-releases notwithstanding, not be quite the Hubble-killer it's sometimes made out to be.

    • The Space Review ... argues that repairing Hubble with robots is both risky and expensive

      Uh, anything you do in space is risky and expensive.
    • From the article:

      "The proposed Hubble robotic servicing mission involves a level of complexity, sophistication, and technology maturity that requires significant development, integration, and demonstration to reach flight readiness"

      They use this as a negative point in the article, but I say "Good, let's push these guys". These are smart guys and necessity is the mother of invention and the father of ingenuity. If we don't press their minds with "...a level of complexity... that requires significant deve

  • Article text for those too lazy to "bugmenot.com" (Score:5, Informative)

    by dan dan the dna man ( 461768 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @05:44AM (#10812122) Homepage Journal
    Robot Helps NASA Refocus on Hubble
    Written-Off Mission to Extend Telescope's Life Is Revived Because of 'Dextre'

    By Guy Gugliotta
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    Friday, November 12, 2004; Page A03

    The promotional video shows a multi-jointed titanium handyman untwisting knobs and disconnecting an electrical cable with slow-motion aplomb, displaying fine motor skills that the voice-over assures will enable it to install "new batteries, gyroscopes and scientific instruments" aboard the aging Hubble Space Telescope.

    But the video is only a teaser. In April, when NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt showed the whole sequence to headquarters VIPs, what had first seemed an elusive dream -- a robotic mission to service Hubble and extend its life by five years or more -- suddenly became real.

    "I remember coming to look at this stuff and asking, 'Is that an [animation]?' And somebody said, 'No, it's really happening,' " recalled Edward J. Weiler, who was NASA's associate administrator for space science at the time and is now Goddard's director. "I didn't think robots could do this kind of stuff."

    It is by no means a sure thing. Yet largely because of the Canadian robot named "Dextre," NASA has gone in less than a year from virtually writing off the Hubble to embracing a mission that will cost between $1 billion and $1.6 billion and approach in complexity the hardest jobs the agency has ever undertaken.

    "Almost as difficult as landing on Mars successfully twice," Weiler called it. Servicing the Hubble, like the nine-month tour de force that has kept two rovers tooling around the Martian countryside, will demand a host of technical tasks and tricks that have never been tried.

    To do it, the United States must develop its first-ever robotic docking vehicle, fill a bag with tools that, in many cases, have not been invented, and use the robot repairman to unscrew j-hooks, open and shut doors and "drawers," disconnect and attach electric connectors, and rig jumper cables.

    By the end of 2007, NASA hopes to put into orbit its Hubble Robotic Vehicle of four components: a de-orbit module designed to dock with Hubble; a grappling arm to seize the telescope during docking and serve as a repair platform; an ejection module to carry spare parts and tools; and Dextre.

    The jobs, in descending order of importance, are to change Hubble's batteries; install new gyroscopes; swap an old camera for a new, more sophisticated one; install a new spectrograph; and, if possible, replace a telescope pointing device and repair another spectrograph.

    "There's nothing easy about it. It's all firsts," said Goddard's Preston M. Burch, Hubble's program manager. "And some of the things we're thinking about make people nervous." The fundamental tenet for a servicing mission, he noted, is the same one that doctors espouse: "Above all, do no harm."

    In the past, shuttle astronauts had the job of servicing Hubble, missions that required a few days of spacewalks lasting six hours each. Dextre "can work 24-7," Weiler said -- a fortunate feature, because robots are not as supple as humans. "Watching it is like watching grass grow," Weiler said.

    Burch hopes to complete the mission in a month. Some of it will be done by the robot working on its own, but most will be handled by ground controllers manipulating the robot's two arms -- like playing a video game.

    "Astronauts are keen to do this," Burch said, and they will probably get the call because of their experience and knowledge of the perils inherent in handling large objects in space -- where something pushed or pulled does not slow down until it is checked.

    "Hey, if they ask me, I would be very happy to do this," said Michael Massimino, an astronaut who serviced the Hubble in 2002 and has joysticked Dextre in the lab. "It's an interesting and challenging project -- it's cool, really cool."

    Dextre, so nicknamed by the Canadian Space Agency, was developed by MD Robotics, of Brampton, Ontar

  • Best way to spend money? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by photonic ( 584757 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @06:19AM (#10812193)
    Getting Hubble healthy again and deliver a new set of glasses would be a major technical achievement. Some of the challenges will be the remote docking of spacecraft and all the complicated swapping of hardware. Remember however that Hubble was originally built for human maintenance and that Dextre [mdrobotics.ca] was built to replace modules at the ISS. It was designed from the beginning for the ISS, but came as an afterthought at Hubble. This will lead to enormous costs that only came available after public outcry. I would think that the same 1B$ could also have been spent on 1 or 2 smaller telescopes. They would probably be smaller than Hubble, but this might be compensated by new technology that wasn't available when Hubble was built 20 years ago. Expendable telescopes are an order of magnitude cheaper than maintainable ones.

    Artist impression of the mission is here [mdrobotics.ca], anybody know if there are some videos?
    • Why they repair this telescope? Is there the cheapest form? To my mind, they must do a new telescope.
    • Still, it would be much cheaper to order a Soyuz (how much are those things, like 20 million a pop?)

      and send a crew of 1 or 2 for a week to do this repair.

    • Compare Hubble to the U.S. military's "Keyhole" spy scopes on which Hubble was based. Keyhole satellites, which are every bit as sophisticated as Hubble, are far, far less expensive. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that its expensive to make a satellite astronaut serviceable.

      Ditching "serviceable" telescopes doesn't have to diminish the ablity of the telescopes. Indeed by following the path of planned obsolecense, NASA could launch an improved SBT every 5 years, instead of every 2
    • Freeman Dyson expressed the same opinion -- that for the money they threw at the Hubble and all of its servicing missions, they could have had a whole bunch of purpose-built telescopes . . . in synchronous instead of low-Earth orbit. So what if one mission fails -- you have a budget to do more.

  • Misleading phrase "largely because of ..." (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SirBruce ( 679714 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @07:44AM (#10812381) Homepage
    It makes it sound like NASA gave up on Hubble, then someone said, "Wait, we've got this great robot!" and NASA said, "Oh, we didn't know that, here's some money, let's save Hubble!"

    In reality, Hubble has already been extended years beyond its operating life. Even without servicing missions, it costs money to support Hubble. Hubble was ALWAYS going to be ended at some point.

    Hubble already received multiple servicing missions beyond what was originally planned. Before Columbia, they were going to do one more "last" servicing mission (and we really mean it this time), but afterwards, it seemed a risk too great to make, since Hubble should have been ended years ago anyway.

    However, robotic servcing was always a possibility, and as the article went on the point out, NASA solicited proposals. And Congress allocated funding. It's not like, as other parts of the article suggest, public outcry forced NASA to change its mind. All public outcry did was get some serious proposals for robotic servicing done, and put a little pressure on Congress to allocate funding for it.

    NASA already has follow-on telescopes in the planning and construction phases, and ground-based scopes are now in many ways more powerful than Hubble. This whole issue will come up again in a few more years, when Hubble needs servicing again, but seriously, it has to die sometime.

    Bruce

    • NASA already has follow-on telescopes in the planning and construction phases, and ground-based scopes are now in many ways more powerful than Hubble. This whole issue will come up again in a few more years, when Hubble needs servicing again, but seriously, it has to die sometime.

      Not necessarily. Hubble will be with us for some time, methinks. See, Hubble has something those other satellites do not - name recognition. Sad and sorry, but it does. Hubble is almost a household name!

      I wouldn't be surprised

  • Exploration Vision (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How will this affect the New Exploration Vision, which is already severely underfunded because politicians lack vision?
  • From the story, the only thing remaining attached to Hubble will be the deorbitor to provide power and eventually the kick out of orbit. I guess the rest will be burned/splashed. Did anyone tell Dextre that it's a suicide mission yet? (I'm sure he'll be brave about it.)

    There'll probably be PR, especially if the mission succeeds, about the pluky robot with Can-do. Maybe even toys in cereal boxes. So they might want to think about how they're going to explain "Where's Dextre now?" to kids.

  • R2D2 where are you? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Charcharodon ( 611187 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @08:42AM (#10812533)
    Who cares if its expense, while I say let's the thing deorbit and move on, it does present an interesting engineering challenge. If they do manage to repair the thing with robots, the accomplishment is not that the Hubble is working again, but the fact that they did it with robots. That fact will give them more options and a big boost to the more ambitious missions that are on the boards as well as increase the capabilities for smaller onse since we can fire off robots into orbit without worrying about having to ground the fleet everytime one crashes.

  • Repair? Replace! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by colinemckay ( 610522 )
    Why not take the 1.6 billion dollars that a risky repair mission would require, and build two or three replacement Hubbles?

    The research is already done, the bugs discovered and quashed, and the support infrastructure is already in place.

    So it should be possible to launch two or three new Hubbles at a cost of $600 million apiece. Instead of one repaired Hubble, why not three new ones?

    • Re:Repair? Replace! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by djmurdoch ( 306849 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @09:57AM (#10812775)
      So it should be possible to launch two or three new Hubbles at a cost of $600 million apiece. Instead of one repaired Hubble, why not three new ones?

      A lot of the 1.6 billion is going to R&D, because this mission would do things that have never been done before.

      Building and launching 2 disposable Hubbles would get you 2 nice telescopes for a while (but not as long as the current one has lasted, since the Hubble design requires periodic servicing); designing a robotic service mission will get you a lot of knowledge about how to do robotics in space, as well as a nice telescope for a few more years (and maybe future robotic service missions can extend its life even further, but those ones won't need all the R&D, so they'll be much cheaper.)
    • Two reasons spring to mind:

      1. Hubble was designed to be launched by the Shuttle; but the Shuttle is now supposed to be devoted to essentially nothing but International Space Station missions. Moreover, the cost of a Shuttle launch itself is of order $600 million. I'm not sure if the US has any unmanned rockets capable of launching the Hubble; even if we did, there would have to be at least some redesign costs to get the replacement Hubble to fit safely inside the rocket's nose and then deploy properly.

      2.
    • Cost seems to be something that has been left out of most of the public debate about HST, at least cost with respect to the observational science. If the goal of the repair mission is to keep the science return flowing, replace. If it's to do something really hard, and keep the science flowing as a side effect, then the robotic thing starts to make more sense. One of the sibling posts addressed this, too.

      I don't think you'll get three telescopes that size for $1.6B (probably only 2), but I bet the HST r

  • In other news, (Score:3, Funny)

    by n1ywb ( 555767 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @09:39AM (#10812704) Homepage Journal
    word is that a hostile robot named Mandark may try to disrupt the mission.

  • original cost $1.5B (Score:3, Informative)

    by joe_janitor ( 628983 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @10:11AM (#10812842)
    How do we justify a $1.6B repair for a device that originally cost $1.5B [nasa.gov]. Seems we could design and launch a much improved model for the same amount.
    • Don't forget the problems that the hubble had when it was first launched. The time line to design a new telescope from scratch and to launch it is huge, and remember, no launch is a given. Any number of problems might crop up during that process.

      Also, note that Hubble was launched and placed via the shuttles, which are currently inactive.

      They seem pretty eager to test out this robot, so maybe it has further application and fixing hubble is the kind of proving ground they need for it, or perhaps using this

  • The Case against Hubble.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Sunday November 14, 2004 @01:57PM (#10813889) Journal
    See also "The case against Hubble"..

    http://www.spacedaily.com/news/hubble-04p.html [spacedaily.com]
  • It seems this amazing Canuck robot is powered by a hybrid fuel cell containing equal parts Labatt Blue and maple syrup. When reached for comment, inventor Doug Mackenzie is quoted as saying "Take off, ya hoser!".

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