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Space Technology

Hope for Hubble 241

Posted by samzenpus from the make-up-your-mind dept.
yulek writes "It may not be over yet. space today reports that Bush's NASA administrator nominee, Michael Griffin, wants to revisit the Hubble decision. Space.com has some more details. The big question is: do we really want to save Hubble for the right reasons or is it more of a symbolic thing? Considering NASA's fiscal woes, is this a waste of funds? I have loved the Hubble images for the last decade, and the research that stemmed from them, but I think that the most incredible camera we've ever made may need more than just an upgrade. Perhaps it is obsolete."
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Hope for Hubble More

Hope for Hubble

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  • Symbolic, Of Course (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikejz84 ( 771717 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:27PM (#12228788)
    There was a proposal floated a little while ago to build a replacement for HST from spare parts that already exist and launch it on top of an expendable rocket. The kicker is that it would not cost much more than the servicing mission! I guess it has more to do with the name 'Hubble' than anything else. In a related story, why do they keep calling them gyroscope when they really are reaction-wheels?
    • Why not just call the thing Hubble II? People would say "Ah, a better hubble than hubble" and stuff.

      • Re:Symbolic, Of Course (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bluGill ( 862 )

        And it would be a better Hubble too because they would use a mirror ground correctly. That alone would make it better than Hubble can ever be.

        I take that back. It would be just like bureaucrats to grind a new mirror to the wrong specs just so everything is the same as Hubble is now. (or is it for political reasons? Makes no difference)

    • There's no denying that Hubble has generated some nice piccies, but Hubble had a lot of project issues (especially the lens thing) that a lot of people in NASA and associates would, I'm sure, rather have forgotten.

      For a lot of people, being able to bury history would be a GoodThing.

    • You'd have to gring a new primary lens, which would take a long time to do (though it could be done the right way this time) and cost a small fortune. We have a known-good unit in place now, with upgrades to boost its primary capabilities by an order of magnitude. Better to go that route instead of adding in a bunch of new variables.
      • Ack. You'd have to grind a new primary mirror. I knew that sounded off.
      • We SHOULD be doing both. Or, at the least, (as you so eloquently put ;) we should be preserving the old one, which is still doing useful science, until we have a real replacement, and meanwhile, FUND a replacement.

        I hope Mr. Griffin realizes that, and has the moxie to browbeat the money out of the Administration. It's just a few drops out of the bucket after all compared to what everything else gets.

        Sigh. I'll just wait and see how serious he is about this.

        SB
    • Where on earth did you hear that? I find that truly hard to believe that the proposal was remotely feasible for that cost. If you had a reference, that would be great....

    • Re:Symbolic, Of Course (Score:5, Informative)

      by hylander_sb ( 181045 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:55PM (#12229035)
      Because there gyroscopes. The Reaction wheels provide the energy to change HST's orientation and the gyros provide the feedback to sense the movement. Hubble's pointing and control systems are more fascinating to me than the science instruments.

      And where did you hear that it would cost less to build another?? Last I heard, only $300,000,000 or so is allocated for the SM. I'd like to see you build a telescope with the same stability and accuracy as HST for that little.
      • You can't even *launch* a shuttle for 300 million. Much less service the Hubble. I'd guess on the order of 500-800 million for a human servicing mission, and probably 1-1.5 billion for a robotic.

        Yes, based on the current Hubble spare parts inventory and expendable launch costs, we probably could launch a Hubble-duplicate for less than the robotic mission would cost.
        • The "current Hubble spare parts" make up only a small portion of the total parts that go into the satellite. One part there is no spare, is the primary mirror, which is the single biggest cost of the telescope outside of launch costs.
      • Stability and accuracy are great, but what about clarity? It does no good to have a satellite that can barely take pictures for us. The images from the hubble are disappointingly low resolution. The technology available now would make a far far far better telescope. Though it would cost more, there are improvements across the board. The truth is.. the hubble WILL be replaced eventually. I am a firm believer in euthanasia of satellites. If a satellite keeps wanting to die i wil help it.

    • Re:Symbolic, Of Course (Found It!) (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mikejz84 ( 771717 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @07:46PM (#12229436)
      Found it! Its called the Hubble Origins Probe http://www.pha.jhu.edu/hop/ The Hubble Origins Probe (HOP) is a proposed 2.4 meter free flying space telescope.The HOP concept is to replicate the design of the Hubble Space Telescope with a much lighter unaberrated mirror and optical telescope assembly, enabling a rapid path to launch, significant cost savings and risk mitigation. HOP will fly the instruments originally planned for the 4th HST servicing mission as well as a new very wide field imager, enhancing the original science mission of Hubble.

  • Nothing wrong with revisiting the decision (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:28PM (#12228798) Homepage
    There's nothing wrong with taking another look at the situation. After all, O'Keefe wasn't exactly thorough in the analysis.

    Personally, I'll be happy when the ESA gets Darwin [esa.int] up ;) Not only will it find terrestrial planets, but even be able to do spectral analyses on their atmospheres.
  • It has been a very useful piece of equipment for the scientific community and would continue to be so. True the cost looks big, but compared to the many other expenditures NASA Makes its a small price for the gain you get from it. Unless you can put up a new telescope with at least it's capabilities for the repair cost its worth the investment.
    • You could make a new hubble for the cost of repairing it. Which would be a better choice?

  • Adaptive Optics (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eingram ( 633624 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:29PM (#12228809)
    How do ground based telscopes + adaptive optics compare with the Hubble? I know the JWST will have optical capabilities too, but probably not as good as Hubble.

    • Re:Adaptive Optics (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xolotl ( 675282 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:52PM (#12229005) Journal
      JWST is an infrared telescope, able to observe at wavelengths in the range 0.6 - 28 microns. Hubble (depending on the instrument) can go to about 8 microns - so not as far as JWST - but it can also see in the visible and near-UV, which JWST can't do.

      As for ground-based telescopes, any space-based instrument has access to the continuous range of wavelengths, whereas ground-based telescopes (even with adaptive optics) are limited by the absorption [everythingweather.com] and scattering in the atmosphere in the UV and infrared. They also don't have to deal with sky glow [ghg.net], which restricts both how long you can take an exposure for -- eventually the background will saturate your detector -- and also the contrast between the thing you're trying to detect and the background (think picking out a small light on a white background against on a dark background).

      This is also why Earth-based telescopes are put on mountains -- to get above as much of the atmosphere as possible. Adaptive optics can improve the "seeing" (blurring caused by turbulence) and, coupled with large-diameter mirrors possible on ground-based telescopes, it will improve the resolution, but it can't deal with the other effects,

    • Re:Adaptive Optics (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tsiangkun ( 746511 )
      And if I could ask a follow up to that question, Will ground based telescopes be able to adjust to increasing level of contaminants in the air, and changes in the atmosphere ?

  • Obsolete? Hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by samrolken ( 246301 ) * <samrolken@noSPam.gmail.com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:30PM (#12228826)
    I generally consider things to be obsolete when they have been replaced by something better. How does this apply to Hubble?

    • Re:Obsolete? Hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .thguorw.wodahs.> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:34PM (#12228856) Homepage Journal
      I think the issue is whether something superior to the Hubble could be built and launched for less cost than the repair mission. If that is the case, then we would be better off replacing the Hubble with somehting better. The Hubble has had an amazing run, but if we can place something even better up there, then I think we ought to do so.
      • It's not like a replacement is sitting in NASA's garage waiting to go up. Some of the parts that would go into a replacement have been built, but nowhere near a majority of the parts. Add in testing, hardening, etc. It's 2, 3 years minimun before the replacement goes up
        • That's the other end of the equation, how long can we wait? If reaplcing the Hubble takes two years, a year of which the Hubble is either gone or unusable, then is it still in our best insterest? I think the biggest risk with a replacement, as I sit here contemplating it, is that it either won't be ready to go, will go up and fail, or the funding for it will get cut. All of which are huge issues.

          I don't have a lot of faith in the current administration's commitment to continuing things which generate s

      • Re:Obsolete? Hardly. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by kevlar ( 13509 )
        The issue is whether something exists on Earth that can replace an orbitting satelite for a fraction of the cost. The answer is YES. There have been an enormous amount of progress in adaptive optics since Hubble went into orbit. So much so that land-based telescopes can correct atmospheric distortion.

        The only benefit for an orbiting telescope now is to observe at wavelengths that the atmosphere naturally filters out.
    • I generally consider things to be obsolete when they have been replaced by something better. How does this apply to Hubble?

      In general: yes. In this case: no. A better telescope isn't going to pop up by itself suddenly (rendering Hubble obsolete). As far as I understand the discussion, it is between investing more money in Hubble OR in this new telescope which _would_ make Hubble obsolete if it were built. In other words: it isn't about what (existing) telescope is better, but about what telescope technol

  • Save Voyager! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For what it costs to determine if Hubble can/should be "saved" we can fund Voyager until it runs out of power. We have never had a man made object communicate with us from outside the solar system.

  • If You Have A Copy of the Hubble Manual... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:30PM (#12228828) Homepage Journal
    If you have a copy of the Hubble Manual, 24 April 1990, NASA will pay you $10,000.

  • Too costly (Score:3, Insightful)

    by L0C0loco ( 320848 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:31PM (#12228830) Homepage
    Saving Hubble will cost at least $500 million. That money could be used to keep all of the other spacecraft that are being considered for termination operating for a few years. There is a more capable replacement, the JWST, on the way in 2011. The only reason they are revisiting the Hubble decision is to appease Senator Mikulski of MD. Oh yeah, Griffin came from APL which is also in MD. You connect the dots.

    • Re:Too costly (Score:2, Interesting)

      by hylander_sb ( 181045 )
      Yeah...there are jobs at stake. Some programs in their early stages have been cannabalized to save the ones that are close to launch. I won't comment on their relative merits. The fact remains that Hubble has been highly successful for the past 15 years and can remain so almost indefinitely. It was designed that way. You all need to stop thinking about this one-time use stuff that's been the prevailing model for the last 50 odd years. Expandable and Upgradable is more cost effective in the long run. Wh
    • Yea, but APL will loose when these programs are cut.../voyager/ulysses/geotail/etc...

      "that money could be used to keep all of the other spacecraft that are being considered for termination operating for a few years"

      Yea, In a perfect world that would be exactly where the extra money went but we both know that given the current NASA vision this extra cash would be dumped into our grand new boondoggle--exploration.

    • Re:Too costly (Score:3, Informative)

      by spanklin ( 710953 )
      The only reason they are revisiting the Hubble decision is to appease Senator Mikulski of MD.

      Well, that, and the fact that a committee made up of scientists that are members of the National Academy of Sciences recommended saving Hubble, which you neglected to mention.

      To date, almost every survey of astronomers has resulted in support for saving Hubble. Senator Mikulski is lending her support to the effort, because the Space Telescope Science Institute is in her constituency, but she is also doing it be

  • Voyeger is more important (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sfcat ( 872532 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:31PM (#12228838)
    Considering how low it takes to get a probe beyond Pluto and the strange pull on the spacecraft (it is off where it should be) and the low cost of continuing to monitor the probes, the voyeger missions should be continued too. Cutting them saves very little money but the budget is so tight that to save one or two mil, we are cutting these very important programs.

    • Re:Voyeger is more important (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Troy ( 3118 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:45PM (#12228949)
      This is a great point. If we have to choose between Hubble and Voyager, frankly I think we should pick Voyager. It may not be as sexy as the Hubble, but at least with the Hubble we could get a working replacement up and running in significantly less time than it would take to get an object to the edge of our solar system.

  • As a rule... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:32PM (#12228843) Journal
    The big question is: do we really want to save Hubble for the right reasons or is it more of a symbolic thing?

    In general, use of the word "we" around here refers to be people who don't, as a group, have the slightest idea what they're talking about, let alone any intention of making any contribution themselves.

    This is a perfect example. Given the inability "we" have to understand why false color images are used, I find it hard to imagine that "we" have an informed opinion on the utility of the Hubble.

    My impression is that the posters here who do know what they're talking about run about 80-20 against hanging on to the Hubble.

    • Re:As a rule... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Astro Dr Dave ( 787433 )

      My impression is that the posters here who do know what they're talking about run about 80-20 against hanging on to the Hubble.

      Really?

      Those who "know what they're talking about" will understand that:

      - NASA funding is being redirected away from science and toward flimsy "national pride" missions (ISS, the moon and Mars).

      - JWST is not a replacement for HST. At the moment there is no replacement for HST on the drawing board.

      - HST is one of the most productive science projects NASA has ever had.

      So e

      • He probably meant the moderated up ones :-)

        You know what I hope? I hope Mr. Griffin has some backbone and tells the Administration that NASA will choose it's own projects, thank you for your input, but we are more qualified to choose what we can and can't do... and we're going back to what we did best, a science and R&D program, and let the private sector do what it does best. ...and then... and then he goes and does it and makes them eat it. With the right kind of publicity it could possibly be pul
      • So explain to me again, why do the "informed" people think HST should not be serviced?

        I am a biologist. I can explain to you why 98% of the people posting in biology-related stories don't have the slightest idea what they're talking about but will freely admit that I'm not qualified to offer an opinion on this one way or the other.

        As I said, most (not all) of the people who seem more informed than simple fanboys seem to support the JWST as a worthwhile replacement. If you can convince them they're mistaken

        • Along with the parent, I don't know where you get the idea that "informed" people think Hubble should be terminated. But here is a reason why Hubble should not be terminated. Hubble's two main niches are 1) UV and 2) high resolution in visible, UV, and near IR. Although JWST is touted by NASA's PR department as a "replacement" for the HST, it in fact does not do #1 at all. (JWST will do a lot of other interesting things -- I'm just pointing out that the idea of it acting as a replacement for HST has no

          • Re:As a rule... (Score:3, Informative)

            by mperrin ( 41687 )
            Hubble's two main niches are 1) UV and 2) high resolution in visible, UV, and near IR. Although JWST is touted by NASA's PR department as a "replacement" for the HST, it in fact does not do #1 at all.

            In fact it's worse than that. JWST is entirely an infrared scope. When HST goes down, we essentially lose all capability for visible-light high resolution imaging. With no replacement telescope even vaguely in planning (unless TPF gets rescoped to have a wide-field camera too... which would be cool but is un

      • Re:As a rule... (Score:4, Informative)

        by mbrother ( 739193 ) * <mbrother.uwyo@edu> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @12:48AM (#12231062) Homepage
        The "informed people" are the astronomers who use Hubble. The consensus plan for the astronomers, who spent a lot of time fighting and worrying about it, is that Hubble should be maintained at least until JWST flies (circa 2012). That's the informed opinion. The majority of naysayers are uninformed (and I can back this statement up pretty easily I expect).

        There is an argument about the cost and risk to lives, vs. the science goals. Only a tiny minority of astronomers are against the goal of servicing Hubble, and, from what I hear, most astronauts don't see the risk as too high. Even given the budget woes, servicing is a small fraction of some elective costs the US has taken on.

        I welcome Griffin reopening the issue. Maybe we shouldn't do it, but I would trust him reaching that decision more than O'Keefe.

    • Re:As a rule... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by hylander_sb ( 181045 )
      Well, maybe you should talk to the end users, I think they're called astronomers and they might have some insight as to the usefulness of HST to their research. Why would we have gone through the time and expense to develop 2 gyro sciense if no one wanted to use it? There isn't a single terrestrial telescope that can touch HST in capabilities. It's only peers are other space telescopes and that's being charitable. They're all very good at doing only one thing be it X-Ray or Infrared. JWST isn't due out

    • Re:As a rule... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by quarkscat ( 697644 )
      As a rule, posters that pull bogus numbers out of
      their very own "black hole" don't know what they
      are taking about.

      The HST (Hubble Space Telescope) is getting a bit
      old, technology-wise. It also seems that some of
      the replacement parts (gyroscopes come to mind)
      have not lasted as long as the originals. But,
      there is no scientific instrument either built
      or on the drawing boards that can entirely replace
      the Hubble. Period.

      The politicos and BS artists would like for the
      public to believe that the Cobb Telescope

  • Obsolete???? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hellfire ( 86129 ) <deviladv AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:34PM (#12228853) Homepage
    Would someone mind telling me what exactly has made the hubble obsolete? What batch of super powerful telescopes has made the hubble unnecessary?

    Maybe the hubble is broken down, maybe it's too difficult to maintain, I'll even entertain the very unscientific assessment that the benefits of the hubble are outweighed by the costs now. However, you can't call something obsolete until something else comes along that's simply better and that can replace it fully.

    With repairs the hubble can still do tremendous things. The submitter calling it "obsolete" is an irresponsible use of words and that bothers me because it implies it has no further worth. That's simply wrong.

  • Tough call... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NoseBag ( 243097 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:35PM (#12228865)
    I suspect that the answer to the question is "both". Hubble has provided stunning information over the years, and - quite frankly - it kicks b*tt! But its old, and NASA can no doubt do better now.

    What I would like to see is a detailed summary cost breakdown (un-spun by the politicos) and ongoing sustaining costs for the thing, as well as the schedule-of-use (i.e. who's using it and how much and for what). This info is probably available, but hard to find.

    Then I'll decide if I/we can afford my/our "feelings" about Hubble, nice as they are.

  • Symbolism or hedging your bets? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:38PM (#12228888)
    > do we really want to save Hubble for the right reasons or is it more of a symbolic thing?

    If you don't have $400M to fix a space telescope, you're not going to get $4B+ to build a new one.

    Consider, further, that if a hypothetical new telescope has a $400M sticker on it today, it'll cost at least $4B by the time Congress is done splitting up the contracts so as to maximize the amount of pork (and therefore votes) allocated.

    Consider, still further, the probability that this (or any other) administration is ever going to agree to spending one thin time on science. People into science tend to think. People who think tend not to vote as predictably. It's therefore in every Congressman's long-term interest to reduce the proportion of such people among the population.

    This isn't an R-vs-D flame. Space telescopes harm Republican politicians by draining money away from faith-based initiatives that would otherwise be used to indoctrinate the next generation of Republican voters, but they also harm Democrat politicians by draining money away from social programmes that foster the kind of nanny-state dependency that produces the next generation of Democrat voters.

    I support keeping the Hubble - even if obsolescent, it's better than nothing. And "nothing" is what we'll end up with if we let it crash and burn.

    As prior art, I cite the X-33 and other Shuttle replacements, all of which were canned years ago.

  • Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tepp ( 131345 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:40PM (#12228901)
    I think your question, is Hubble obsolete, is the wrong question to ask.

    Hubble IS obsolete. And will be replaced by the http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]JWST. But the JWST won't launch until August, 2011.

    Hubble will die soon. So what are scientists to do from 2006 until August 2011? Although we have many world class telescopes on earth, all of them have to contend with the atmosphere, plus earth's orbit - its rotation around the sun affect which part of our sky is visible at night, and because of this annoying thing called "day", those telescopes can only be used at night, which further restrict which part of the universe can be viewed at any given moment.

    I'm not insulting earth-based telescopes, but I do believe we need to keep Hubble functioning until the JWST is ready. For safety, Hubble should operate a few months after the JWST is launched, just in case the JWST has flaws that are only discovered after launch... remember Hubble's mirror flaw which required an additional flight to fix?
    • So what are scientists to do from 2006 until August 2011? Perhaps they could try getting a life instead of staring off into space all the time? If I was a scientist, I might welcome a 5 year break.

    • Re:Wrong question (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rtaylor ( 70602 )
      Do list off all of the things that Hubble can do and all of the things that JWST can do. I think you'll find that the lists are not identical and that you could easily find enough work for both in non-overlapping areas.

    • Keeping Hubble (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mdmoery ( 875902 )
      1. I agree completely with keeping Hubble going until the Webb telescope is in place. Remember Shoemaker-Levy 9? We had telescopes and probes in the right place at the right time to capture a once-in-a-lifetime event that could not possibly be foreseen. We need to maintain the capability. We have no idea what we might miss if we don't.

      2. We are not talking about changing a plan here. The servicing mission was always part of the plan. But Columbia made O'Keefe gutless. That fact is that it will be NO

  • It's an icon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by brontus3927 ( 865730 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `3ardrawde'> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:41PM (#12228908) Homepage Journal
    If the White House burned down and it was discovered that it would only cost a little more to build a new White House over in Arlington then to rebuild it at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which would you choose?

    The Hubble Space Telescope stands for everything NASA has done right in the last 12 years. At the completion of STS-61 [hubblesite.org], the mission to replace the warped mirror, NASA's approval rating was at it's highest since the launch of Columbia. Possibly since the Apollo missions. Besides saving a $1.5 billion dollar investment. The mission proved that servicing missions could be done. It opened the door to the idea that in orbit manufacutring and repairs weren't just science fiction.

    Since then Hubble has increased our understanding of the universe 10 fold. Its more than just a space telescope, it's a national monument. I think every effort should be made to keep it in working order until the technology exists to safely return it to Earth intact so it can be displayed at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

  • I got an idea (Score:5, Funny)

    by bman08 ( 239376 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:44PM (#12228927)
    Maybe they can turn it around, point it at earth and use it to film new episodes of Star Trek Enterprise!

  • Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jlmcgraw ( 140716 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:44PM (#12228932)
    This sounds just like the Terri Schiavo case, except set in space!

  • It's not obsolete, it's just politics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:44PM (#12228941) Homepage Journal
    Even though 90 percent of the public is way more interested in pictures from Hubble than they are in the International Space Station (ISS) or any moon base, the scaredy-cats in DC don't want to risk fixing it with the military space shuttle, so they can send more spy satellites up instead.

    Sigh. It will soon be replaced with something better from the EU or Japan anyway.

  • Re: CEV... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vrmlguy ( 120854 ) <samwyse&gmail,com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:45PM (#12228948) Homepage Journal
    The space.com article also says that the timeline for the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) will be revisited. I say, "Hurrah!"

    Much has been said about how expensive it is to keep a spare shuttle ready for a rescue mission in case something happens in orbit. And yet the United States and Russia have kept thousands of missles thirty minutes from launch 24x7 for the past thirty years. There must be some way to deliver supplies to an ailing shuttle while a rescue mission is prepared, without endangering the second crew by rushing things. Really, all you need is a stack of solid-fuel boosters to get a capsule into orbit. The whole thing could be put together using off-the-shelf parts and kept parked on a launch pad for years.

  • Instead of repairing hubble, NASA should use the money to train monkeys to work at the USPO. They could evaluate software patents more accurately than anyone currently working there.

  • Hubble, Hubble, Toil and Trouble (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak&yahoo,com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @06:55PM (#12229036) Homepage Journal
    Fire Burn and Caldera Bubble...


    The problem with launching a replacement to Hubble is that there isn't one, right now. All space telescopes due to be launched are on very different wavelengths. Plans to build super-massive ground-based telescopes look interesting, but they aren't even started yet and there's no guarantee they'll ever get them to work.


    Hubble is what we have in orbit now. Whether it stays or whether it goes, no space-based alternative will exist for a long time - maybe a decade or two after Hubble is disposed of, if no rescue is launched.


    Space telescopes are vital because, although there are ground telescopes that can be programmed to correct for the distortion, the atmosphere is still not forgiving. Light that is absorbed cannot be calculated for, because you have nothing to base your calculations on. Also, most telescopes are either on top of active volcanos, in Earthquake zones, or in Hurricane-prone regions. It's impressive there are any left standing. One geophysical mishap could set the science of astronomy back thirty or forty years, maybe more.

    • One such mishap has recently occured in Australia, the Mt. Stromlo obsevatory was recently burned to the ground when a bushfire/storm wiped out the area.

  • My physics professor said in a lecture two years ago that the Hubble is long obsolete; in fact it's nothing but a toy now. Ground telescopes have advanced their techniques for correcting atmospheric distortion of the image to the point that taking a picture with a telescope in space is less desireable. In fact, he suggests that putting telescopes in space is not even a worthwhile venture anymore, because updates in technology can be rolled out on the ground so much faster than in space that it doesn't make
    • Blockquoth the poster:

      It looks awfully silly when you've spent millions on putting a tool way up in orbit when it becomes a toy in less than twelve months.

      Yes, and that would be a great point, if it were any way true. The images by Hubble have not been matched by Earth-based telescopes. Adaptive optics is a great tool and deserves all the kudos being thrown its way -- but it's a best-guess correction to atmospheric distortions. Once in, those distortions cannot be completely eliminated. Hubble isn't

    • Re:Space telescopes are obsolete (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Almost-Retired ( 637760 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @08:04PM (#12229560) Homepage
      Methinks your professor is full of it clear to the roots of his hairpiece.

      Or, let me put it to you this way:

      If these ground based scopes that have been brought online in the last 5 years are so friggin great, why are we not being treated to some of their output? With the exception of the twins on Mona Kea that Mr keck financed, the rest of them have been so far as I know, built with public money. So I'm actually surprised that we have all these people preaching at us as to just how much better these new toys are in comparison to the Hubble, but frankly, I've not seen a single image to back those statements up.

      If the new ones are so much better in fact, then why are TPTB so afraid to let us look at some of their image data so that we, the taxpayer, can quite writing his congress-critters asking them to save what is not just a national treasure, but IMO a treasure to all humankind.

      So as Jeff Foxworthy would say, "here's your sign", you proponents of pulling the feeding tube from hubble, either put up images that prove what you're saying, or STFU. The ball is in your court.

      How about some movies of the last 90 days of eta carinae for instance, its right handy even, or maybe a movie of the last 6 months of the orbital goings on around Sag A? Maybe we could prove that Sag A is indeed a black hole of 6 million suns mass. And I'd love to see you attempt to duplicate the pair of really really deep space images, showing stuff over 10 billion light years away, that I'm using for 2 of my screen backgrounds here. But of course, being inside the atmosphere, thats simply impossible for ground based scopes.

      Maybe the hubble is obsolete, but as yet, I've seen nothing that can touch what its done. The JW scope works at different wavelenghts, so it won't be able to replace the hubble. Supplant it, confirm each others findings maybe, but not "replace" it, they simply do 2 different jobs.

      --
      Cheers, Gene
      "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
      soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
      -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
      99.34% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
    • I'm sorry, that's just stupid.

      An example:
      2 of the 3 sources for the first optical evidence of a planet outside our solar system came from SPACE TELESCOPES (Hubble and Spitzer). This was last week I think. Maybe 2 weeks ago. Is that the work of an obsolete system?

      Your physics professor needs to stick to dropping balls from ladders and leave the astronomy to astronomers.

      Friggin' professors. They piss me off.

    • My physics professor said in a lecture two years ago that the Hubble is long obsolete; in fact it's nothing but a toy now.

      Frankly, he's badly wrong.

      Ground telescopes have advanced their techniques for correcting atmospheric distortion of the image to the point that taking a picture with a telescope in space is less desireable.

      Mostly true, in that a couple of telescopes on their *best* nights can correct for enough distortion to be almost as good as Hubble. Someday it maybe more than a few, and it mayb

  • Preserve Hubble for the future (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Rather than spend money on sending the Hubble into the ocean, let's send Hubble into a higher orbit (maybe one that will keep it around for a couple hundred years?) This way future generations can decide if it is worth saving. How much would we spend now to recover the Mayflower if it was out there somewhere waiting for us?

  • Hubble Origins Probe: the best option (Score:3, Informative)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @07:56PM (#12229508) Journal
    As I often mention, a solution that everybody seems to be ignoring is putting up a new telescope, the Hubble Origins Probe. This new telescope would be more capable than the original Hubble and cost less than a robotic repair mission. For whatever reason, this possibility is almost never mentioned, although it's IMHO the best option by far.

    Obligatory blurb:

    Astronomy Magazine reports [astronomy.com] that an international team of astronomers has proposed an alternative [spaceref.com] to sending a robotic or human repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope [wikipedia.org]. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe [jhu.edu], reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build, less than the estimated cost of a service mission [wired.com].

  • NASA budget (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @08:14PM (#12229641) Journal
    In an attempt to promote something resembling intelligent discussion, here's a link to official information on NASA's budget [nasa.gov].

    In particular, I'd like to point out the $4.5 billion devoted solely to the Space Shuttle for FY2005, and the $1.6 billion devoted to the International Space Station.

  • Robotic servicing (Score:5, Informative)

    by SaveHubble ( 875949 ) on Thursday April 14, 2005 @12:04AM (#12230905)
    As someone working on the Hubble robotic servicing mission (I know most /.ers will say this biases my opinion; really it just means I can speak from a position of knowledge), I can state 100% that this mission can be done, and can be done on schedule.

    Let me break down the phases of the mission for those who are unaware:

    1.) Launch - needs little explanation - a Delta IV or Atlas V heavy lift launches the HRV into Hubble's orbital plane

    2.) Checkout & Commissioning - The robot arm and other HRV elements are tested and verified operational

    3.) Orbit Phasing & Rendezvous - The craft will be commanded to approach Hubble. Autonomous systems will be used to coordinate the final stages of this approach, using technologies currently being proven out on the XSS-11 spacecraft which launched this week, and to be launched next week on the DART spacecraft.

    4.) Capture & Berthing- The robot arm is set up for capture, and when the vision system determines that the end effector is within tolerances, an autonomous capture is performed. HRV is performing station-keeping until just before, and when HRV and HST are known to have a negative relative drift rate (receding), the capture process is allowed to begin. A capture ends with the arm grappled to one of HST's shuttle grapple fixtures. The vision system is in development, and the hardware has been space-proven for the past ~20 years on Shuttle... in fact the exact same end-effector design has been used on all previous HST servicing missions. After Capture, the arm decelerates HST and then engages it into the HRV latches (same latching arrangement as on a shuttle servicing mission).

    5.) Battery Augmentation - HST's batteries will die soon, and are one of the prime schedule drivers for the mission. The dexterous robot (two armed robot) connects wire conduits from the HRV batteries to the outside of HST and routes solar array power to them. The hardest part of this task is transfering the 2 prime or 2 redundant connectors on each of the port and starboard diode boxes (located just under the solar array masts). This operation has been proven out on the ground, using a validated flightlike 1G testbed version of the actual dexterous robot, and a hi-fi Hubble mockup. In fact I think operators demo'd this very op just yesterday for maybe the 20th time. Trust me... it's highly doable.

    6.) Changout WideField and add Gyros - The gyroscopes are the next most likely item to fail on HST, and are another schedule driver. With the new two-gyro mode currently under investigation, the lifetime of HST could likely be extended beyond the 2007 timeframe. The Rate-Gyro Assemblies are attached conveniently to the outside of WFC3, the replacement wide-field camera for WFPC2. WFPC2 is the camera responsible for most of the majestic galaxy and planetary photographs we seen in the news and magazines. WFC3 will improve yet again over that. Changing out WFPC2 involves de-mating the internal connectors, removing the ground-strap, unlatching the instrument, and sliding it out of the -V3 radial instrument bay rails. The old instrument is transported down to a stowage location in the HRV, and the new instrument is installed in the empty HST bay in the reverse sequence. This entire operation has been demo'd several times over the past year.

    7.) Changeout COSTAR - After the two critical repairs (batteries and gyros), we move into the get-aheads and upgrades. The COSTAR instrument, sitting in axial bay 4, has performed corrective optics functions since its installation during the first servicing mission. Now that all HST instruments are built with integrated corrective optics, this instrument is obsolete, and can be replaced by something more productive; the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). To perform the changeout, the robot must unlatch and open the -V2 aft shroud doors, attach a handling fixture to COSTAR, attach a connector transfer panel to the handling fixture, transfer the 4 COSTAR harness connectors, transfer the ground

    • So there you have it. The mission in a nutshell. Granted it's far more complex than I've outlined, but all the major hurdles are being examined, tested, solutions proven, and checked off one by one.

      You forgot phase 0)Develop and test a dextrous robotic arm thats more dextrous than any yet built. Develop and test an autonomous docking system thats far more advanced than the system being tested on the XSS-11. Package and integrate these systems.

      Three very tall orders indeed.

  • It is not "obsolete" (Score:5, Informative)

    by mbrother ( 739193 ) * <mbrother.uwyo@edu> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @12:35AM (#12231012) Homepage
    Only an poorly informed idiot, or a non-astronomer, would say this. I got a proposal through this year to do some imaging work on a class of objects known as "post-starburst quasars." I can't really do the same project with any other telescope ANYWHERE. Is that obsolete?! The Hubble Space Telescope, especially one refurbished and updated with new insturments like COS (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph), can do things no other telescope in existence can do. Things that are useful. Again, only a poorly informed idiot would say it is obsolete.

    There is an argument, and discussion, that should be had in an honest manner, about the cost and risk to astronauts' lives. One of my old professors became an astronaut who serviced Hubble last time, and I've thought about applying for Mission Specialist myself, so I don't take this lightly.

    Mike Griffin, from what I can tell, is probably Bush's best nomination ever. I'll respect his decisions in a way I have not from the previous head. Hubble is perhaps the crowning jewel of NASA, and not to be discarded lightly. I'm not being sentimental here. I apply for Hubble time every year because the things Hubble can do can be done no other way.

  • Fly it to the moon (Lagrange point) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by garyebickford ( 222422 ) <gar37bicNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday April 14, 2005 @03:25AM (#12231523)
    Others have proposed this: IIRC the present plan involves sending a robotic mission to Hubble to grab it and accelerate it (negatively) to de-orbit velocity, and steer it into the proper entry trajectory. But such a robotic mission could just as easily accelerate it (positively) so that its orbit reaches one of the Lagrange points (L2? I forget which is which), where it can rest forever, essentially. The only difference appears to be the relative fuel requirement. I don't know how much the difference is. It takes significant fuel to slow it down to suborbital velocity, just as it takes fuel to speed it up to a higher orbit that would (eventually) intersect the Lagrange point, then slow it down enough to allow the gravity well there to hang onto it.

    This would accomplish "saving" this historic piece of machinery, which could become our first extra-orbital National Monument to be visited occasionally by those moon tourists in a couple of decades. It has become such a major symbol in the popular conscienceness that it is possible that the additional money to do this might be raised in private donations. Perhaps NASA should consider moving ownership of Hubble to another entity that could try to do this, such as the Smithsonian or a private nonprofit set up just for the purpose. There are even perhaps 100 individuals who could fund this out of their own resources.

    It would also eliminate the rush, providing an opportunity to mount future missions to upgrad it, refuel it or whatever future folks want to do. As many have noted, there is still plenty of good science that can be done with it. As it becomes ever more obsolete, access to it will become easier, perhaps to the point that high school students might even have a chance.

    The Lagrange point might even be a good place to put it, out of the dust and dirt that Earth drags around, and even away from the Earth's bow shock in the solar wind, and the various other busyness around the planet.

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