Hubble Space Telescope Will Last Through the Mid-2020s, Report Says (space.com) 60
schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Despite recent issues with one of its instruments, the Hubble Space Telescope is expected to last at least another five years. A new report suggests that the iconic spacecraft has a strong chance of enduring through the mid-2020s. [...] One reason the spacecraft has lasted so long is that astronauts have provided aid. Servicing missions continued to update the telescope until 2009, when the space shuttle was retired. The final update to Hubble included the installation of two brand-new instruments, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and WFC3. The astronauts on Servicing Mission 4 also performed on-site repairs for the telescope's two other instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), both of which had stopped working. The astronauts additionally replaced Hubble's 18-year-old batteries with new ones; installed six new gyroscopes, whose job is turning the telescope; and added a brand-new Fine Guidance System to point the instrument. Astronauts also covered Hubble's equipment bays with insulating panels and installed a device that will help to guide the observatory down when its mission comes to an end.
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Robots and humans (Score:2)
The longevity or Hubble is still more proof that our machines take to space as a natural medium, with missions routinely serving a multiple of their expected lifetimes. On the other hand, Hubble got a large part of its extended lifetime from manned servicing. In fact if it had not been for manned missions, Hubble would have returned no data at all.
Re:Robots and humans (Score:5, Insightful)
the Hubble got launched, fixed and repaired and updated and serviced because the US had the Space Shuttle to carry a crew, equipment, parts, space walkers, support, the Canada arm, manoeuvring fuel, a toilet and shower up to the Hubble's high orbit. They don't have a Shuttle any more.
The US plans for a return to manned spaceflight involves 1960s-style "spam in a can" up-around-and-down flights to nowhere, with none of the useful luxuries the Shuttle had, especially the ability to support spacewalks.
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There's no reason why, for example, Dragon couldn't support EVA, the same way that Gemini did. It could also carry significant mass and volume of unpressurized spare parts in the trunk.
In fact, because of its tremendous dry mass, the Shuttle had a worse time trying to get to the HST's orbit than Dragon would have.
Re:Robots and humans (Score:4, Informative)
Gemini "EVA" involved both crew members being suited for space all the time in the capsule since the spacewalks involved depressurising the entire crew living quarters. The Hubble had an airlock, jumpsuited support personnel for the jumpsuited spacewalkers who assisted them into their suits and out again permitting multiple two-man multi-hour spacewalks to accomplish several different tasks on each flight which lasted several days.
The Shuttle also had the Canada arm to carry space walkers and parts to the Hubble as well as grapple with the Hubble itself. Dragon has no arm and nowhere and no way to mount an arm or power and control it.
Dragon is optimised to reach the ISS orbit at about 400km, carrying passengers up and down from the space station. The Hubble orbits at about 550km, a lot higher. To reach the Hubble and manoeuvre around it the Dragon would have to carry more fuel and less payload but still have parts, EVA suits, supplies for an extended flight time of over a week, an airlock etc.
The Shuttle had a large dry mass but it also had a large "wet" mass -- it could launch with up to 18 tonnes of manoeuvering fuel as well as 20 tonnes of payload in the payload bay (there were mass tradeoffs though depending on the mission). Dragon is designed down to meet "spam-in-a-can" specifications, a Soyuz replacement with some extra bells and whistles.
It would be better to build and launch a Hubble replacement rather than attempt to keep it running by repair and maintenance flights. Technology has moved on since the 1980s when the Hubble was designed and built. I doubt if there's a budget for an exact replacement now though.
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... JWST has an impossibly complicated origami shield for no reason.
There's a reason, a very good reason: JWST is designed to be an infrared telescope, hence it has to be kept at very low temperature, and if you looked around the Inet about JWST, you would find why the shield is this way - it's optimal considering weight needed isolation and price.
Then there is WFIRST ... They were handed a ready made spaceframe that they are familiar with.
WFIRST was designed to be smaller, however about 2011 NRO disclosed having a project of Hubble class spy telescopes (since 1976) and in 2012 donated 2 not needed mirrors, not spaceframes - just optics, which has to be adjusted to
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The Shuttle, you mean undoubtedly :)
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Gemini "EVA" involved both crew members being suited for space all the time in the capsule since the spacewalks involved depressurising the entire crew living quarters. The Hubble had an airlock, jumpsuited support personnel for the jumpsuited spacewalkers who assisted them into their suits and out again permitting multiple two-man multi-hour spacewalks to accomplish several different tasks on each flight which lasted several days.
Sure it's not terribly convenient to do it by depressurizing the cabin, but this is still a vehicle that was designed for up to seven people, so there's lots of room to change into EVA suits for a crew of, say, three.
Dragon is optimised to reach the ISS orbit at about 400km, carrying passengers up and down from the space station. The Hubble orbits at about 550km, a lot higher. To reach the Hubble and manoeuvre around it the Dragon would have to carry more fuel and less payload but still have parts, EVA suits, supplies for an extended flight time of over a week, an airlock etc.
Have you seen STS's altitute/payload curve? Pretty much anything has better capability. Hell, to phrase it your way, "the Shuttle is optimized to reach a 200 km altitude". Extra 150 km above the ISS is "a lot" for the Shuttle, but absolutely trivial for Dragon on top of a Falcon 9.
The Shuttle had a large dry mass but it also had a large "wet" mass -- it could launch with up to 18 tonnes of manoeuvering fuel as well as 20 tonnes of payload in the payload bay
NOT to HTS' a
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The seven-person Dragon capsule has people packed in like sardines, less usable volume than a people-carrier. Getting three people and two spacewalk suits plus EVA backpacks, pre-breathing apparatus and exercise equipment into the back of a small minivan and expect the crewmen to be able to do anything once they're in there is not a goer.
From the NASA webpages on EVAs from the ISS:
The ISS pre-breathe protocol involves breathing pure oxygen for a total of 2 hours and 20 minutes and includes a short period o
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Dragon crews only get one spacewalk per flight
Why?
Dragon 2 can carry a total of 6 tonnes including crew, supplies etc. to ISS orbit, much less up to the Hubble orbit of course.
That's absolutely not "of course". Falcon 9 Block 5 has up to 22 tonnes of total payload to low LEO in expendable mode (modulo current PAF, of course, unless the one for Falcon Heavy is used). If Dragon 2 can carry 6 tonnes of payload mass to ISS' altitude, then it's the same amount it can carry to Hubble's altitude - precisely because it's not the Shuttle. The Shuttle had zero performance reserves counted into its payload figures, unlike F9+Dragon.
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"spam in a can" (Apollo-Saturn) put the Skylab space station into orbit with its attached Apollo Telescope Mount in 1973, 17 years (and many billions of development dollars) before the Space Shuttle launched Hubble. There is no reason why Apollo Saturn technology couldn't have produced a Hubble-like observatory, at overall considerably less systems cost.
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There is no reason why Apollo Saturn technology couldn't have produced a Hubble-like observatory, at overall considerably less systems cost.
Yes there is a reason.
Perhaps you want to read up why and how the software industry got hooked up to "source code control" or "version control".
The Saturns had no proper version control of their build plans (the first ones had none at all).
Basically every new one was build from scratch with primitive plans and the rest of the knowledge in the minds of the engineers/work
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In fact if it had not been for manned missions, Hubble would have returned no data at all.
Hubble would be hobbled!
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But manned servicing is not the only option, or even the best option. Robot servicing, if designed from the beginning would be far more cost effective. In fact the a robot to service Hubble did begin development in 2004 and passed critical design review in 2005, before its budget was cut.
The cost of every Shuttle mission was more than a billion dollars (this is the amortized cost of running the Shuttle program, without including the original development). NASA claimed the Shuttle cost $450 million per launc
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The longevity or Hubble is still more proof that our machines take to space as a natural medium, with missions routinely serving a multiple of their expected lifetimes. On the other hand, Hubble got a large part of its extended lifetime from manned servicing. In fact if it had not been for manned missions, Hubble would have returned no data at all.
Without getting fixed, Hubble would have returned data just fine, but it would have been of limited use because the optics where out of focus. It was able to collect imagery, it's just that the blurry images would have been no better than what could be obtained from earth based telescopes.
Even with the "repair" missions, Hubble hasn't lived up to it's original designed resolution but has far exceeded expiations in other ways that more and make up for any initial troubles and costs.
Its final mission (Score:1, Insightful)
will be to land on Trump like that house in The Wizard of Oz, so we won't have to endure another 4 years of his idiocy.
After many delays (Score:5, Informative)
the James Webb Space Telescope, (JWST) is currently scheduled for March 2021. It was designed as the successor to the Hubble , and originally scheduled for launch in June 2018.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel... [nasa.gov]
How interesting, a government web site that's still working.
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I fear the Webb will get out to the lagrange point and either fail to deploy correctly or just die.
That beast is SO COMPLICATED they can't even get the deployment to work right in testing.
Re: After many delays (Score:1)
How many projects have you worked on where the technology to complete the project didnt even exist at the projects kickoff?
The service mission will be a robot (Score:2)
On a relatively cheap rocket, one way. And hopefully the Web has been designed so that it can be serviced by a robot, with easy to undo bolts etc.
JWST isn't a true replacement (Score:3)
JWST isn't a true "replacement" for Hubble.
Tthere are a few things JWST can do that Hubble can't, but there are a LOT of things Hubble can do that JWST can't. It's more of a step sideways than a step forward.
As an augment to Hubble, it has the potential to be a fantastic resources. As an outright replacement, it kind of sucks.
Making matters worse, JWST's expected service life is shockingly short, and unlike Hubble, NASA appears to really *mean* it when it says it plans to deorbit JWST on schedule (to avoid
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By all accounts, the Hubble Space Telescope should retire to a museum such as the Smithsonian but instead it will be burned up during re-entry like a piece of space garbage. So sad :-(
Says who? Is that official? De-orbiting it will need a mission sent. Might as well boost it to a higher long-term orbit instead.
One day, somebody will offer to bring it back. Would be a lot of prestige for the BFR, or whoever succeeds in building a suitable vehicle.
(The Shuttle would have been capable of returning the 11 tons to Earth.)
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"De-orbiting" costs much less fuel and is a much longer term solution. Reducing its orbital speed even slightly will bring it into more contact with Earth's atmosphere, which will continue to slow its speed until it spirals down: this is the normal fate of every object in LEO, or low earth orbit. The thing is 40 feet long and weighs 22 tons. I find myself wishing it could be salvaged for posterity, like many NASA missions it has vastly exceeded its expected work life and provided unique insights into the na
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Just get the Chinese to blow it up (Score:2)
Would be even cheaper. And the Chinese don't worry about space junk.
No Shuttle to carry it (Score:2)
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A device (Score:2)
installed a device that will help to guide the observatory down when its mission comes to an end.
i.e. one of the astronauts lost his watch inside the casing.
Post-Space Shuttle Legacy (Score:3)