'We Still Need Hubble': Why NASA's Revolutionary Space Telescope Isn't Dead Yet (cnet.com) 41
CNET spoke to the systems and deputy program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope at Lockheed Martin, who remembers the first 1995 "deep field" image from the Hubble Space Telescope — taken over 10 days and revealing 3,000 galaxies. But he also remembers just how revolutionary it was. "To look at a 'dark' sliver of the sky and see so many stars and galaxies really drives home how much we still have to learn about the universe."
Looking back, that was only from 340 miles above our atmosphere — not the million miles from Earth travelled by the Webb Space Telescope (which also scours the universe "for cosmic bits emanating luminescence elusive to human eyes, otherwise known as infrared light.")
Yet while this has been a glorious month for astronomy, "We will absolutely still need Hubble," said Cornell University astronomer Nikole Lewis. "In fact, I'm in the process of trying to put together a budget for a large treasury program on Hubble." Lewis is after something Hubble has but JWST lacks. She studies exoplanets and intends to use visible and ultraviolet light wavelengths to decode clouds and hazes of foreign worlds — the type of light JWST isn't sensitive to. "There's a lot of important information at those wavelengths."
Despite JWST's clout, Hubble is also still the top candidate for scrutinizing galaxies moving along the X or Y axis, rather than the Z axis. "While galactic motion 'toward' and 'away' from Earth is very easy to measure with redshift," a JWST specialty, "'side to side' motion is harder," Caplan said.
In truth, this unique Hubble power turns out to be how we realized a pretty massive detail about galaxies. Many of them are on a crash course right now. By staring at Andromeda over the years — the galaxy that Hubble's namesake used as evidence in 1923 to prove our universe extends beyond the Milky Way — and measuring how its light on individual pixels transferred from one to the next, JWST's predecessor showed us that this galaxy isn't just orbiting ours. "They really will collide," Caplan explained. Would JWST have caught that?
Nonetheless, all of this is to say that as JWST continues to flood the internet with colorful depictions of space's outer reaches, we should remember that it isn't Hubble's replacement. JWST is its successor. It'll work in tandem with Hubble and wouldn't exist in a world without it.... And though the James Webb Space Telescope's story began with a bang, we ought not to let Hubble's end with a whimper. "They're not shutting Hubble down," said Dave Meyer, a Northwestern University professor focused on Hubble discoveries.
"We still think that's about a decade away."
And that systems and deputy program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope at Lockheed Martin also shared another part of its legacy: inspiring the next generation of astronomers. "I grew up being fascinated by the Shuttle program and was mesmerized watching the astronauts service Hubble.
"That was definitely part of my inspiration to become an aerospace engineer."
Looking back, that was only from 340 miles above our atmosphere — not the million miles from Earth travelled by the Webb Space Telescope (which also scours the universe "for cosmic bits emanating luminescence elusive to human eyes, otherwise known as infrared light.")
Yet while this has been a glorious month for astronomy, "We will absolutely still need Hubble," said Cornell University astronomer Nikole Lewis. "In fact, I'm in the process of trying to put together a budget for a large treasury program on Hubble." Lewis is after something Hubble has but JWST lacks. She studies exoplanets and intends to use visible and ultraviolet light wavelengths to decode clouds and hazes of foreign worlds — the type of light JWST isn't sensitive to. "There's a lot of important information at those wavelengths."
Despite JWST's clout, Hubble is also still the top candidate for scrutinizing galaxies moving along the X or Y axis, rather than the Z axis. "While galactic motion 'toward' and 'away' from Earth is very easy to measure with redshift," a JWST specialty, "'side to side' motion is harder," Caplan said.
In truth, this unique Hubble power turns out to be how we realized a pretty massive detail about galaxies. Many of them are on a crash course right now. By staring at Andromeda over the years — the galaxy that Hubble's namesake used as evidence in 1923 to prove our universe extends beyond the Milky Way — and measuring how its light on individual pixels transferred from one to the next, JWST's predecessor showed us that this galaxy isn't just orbiting ours. "They really will collide," Caplan explained. Would JWST have caught that?
Nonetheless, all of this is to say that as JWST continues to flood the internet with colorful depictions of space's outer reaches, we should remember that it isn't Hubble's replacement. JWST is its successor. It'll work in tandem with Hubble and wouldn't exist in a world without it.... And though the James Webb Space Telescope's story began with a bang, we ought not to let Hubble's end with a whimper. "They're not shutting Hubble down," said Dave Meyer, a Northwestern University professor focused on Hubble discoveries.
"We still think that's about a decade away."
And that systems and deputy program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope at Lockheed Martin also shared another part of its legacy: inspiring the next generation of astronomers. "I grew up being fascinated by the Shuttle program and was mesmerized watching the astronauts service Hubble.
"That was definitely part of my inspiration to become an aerospace engineer."
We can use Hubble ... (Score:5, Funny)
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At the rate JWST is going, Hubble will remain operational for longer.
I'm disappointed by the impact that JWST took before it was even operational, and I'm worried that L2 is going to be unsuited to missions on account of debris.
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Yeah, that was kind of disappointing.
Meteoroid: "Welcome to space, Webby! ~POW~"
They are looking at reworking its schedule to do observations that minimize the angle of exposure, being the average direction of meteoroid flight is roughly known. Different times of the year will favor different observation targets.
Hubble will be replaced (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Hubble will be replaced (Score:3, Funny)
Unless some republican senators decides that you can't find god with it and cancels the project.
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Find god? But I thought most republicans had already found him...?
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They lost him in the first place, they clearly can't be trusted with him
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Unless some republican senators decides that you can't find god with it and cancels the project.
God's in LA, on a bus, trying to get home. He had borrowed his son's moped, but it ran out of gas. He had to borrow some change from a homeless guy for bus fare. The bike rack on the bus was full so he left the moped chained to a post. It got stolen.
Re: Hubble will be replaced (Score:2)
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Or some democrat senators decide it is racist somehow.
Sadly the lunatics of all political sides got amplified to the stratosphere and things like "catering to the regular, non insane people" got left behind.
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They don't think on the consequences or even how the thing they're wanting will be implemented.
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I'm looking forward to the forthcoming CocaCola / Pepsi space telescope wars.
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In a few years, we are very likely to have a launch vehicle capable of getting a 9m device weighing 100 tons into orbit for around $20 million (2022 dollars
And where are you getting that number consider Falcon Heavy has a max of 70 tons and costs $90 million not including inflation.
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Not Falcon, Spacex's Starship.
Consensus is that it will launch by the end of the year. 9m diameter, 100 tons+, less than $100 million per launch.
Why would you reply without bothering to find this out?
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A Starship launch is expected to cost about $2 million (2019) and be sold for around $10 million (2019). I blew it up to $20 million (2022) to account for the fact I don't think they'll hit their $10 million (2019) per launch target until they are around 10 years further into the program.
If you do the math and assume they hit production costs double their target production costs (they are rumored to be nearing the double target on engines already), the per launch cost of Starship could drop below Falcon 9 (
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A Starship launch is expected to cost about $2 million (2019) and be sold for around $10 million (2019). I blew it up to $20 million (2022) to account for the fact I don't think they'll hit their $10 million (2019) per launch target until they are around 10 years further into the program.
So maybe sometime in the future it might be $10M per launch. That's a lot of speculation there.
If you do the math and assume they hit production costs double their target production costs (they are rumored to be nearing the double target on engines already), t
If you do the math the current cost is $2500 / lb for Space X to launch now for the first 440 lbs. At $20M for 100 tons, that's $100 / lb. Space X has to drop the costs $2400 / lb. That's just the math.
he per launch cost of Starship could drop below Falcon 9 (at least what they charge,,, the rumored Falcon 9 actual cost is under $20 million per launch)
Based on what? Pure speculation and very magical thinking. Agai
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"Why are you bothering to reply without reading and understanding?"
Far from not reading or understanding your ignorant comment, the reply pointed what you ignored in your ignorant comment. You ignoramus.
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Sadly unknowing fool: "Why are you bothering to reply without reading and understanding?"
Also sadly unknowing fool: "You confirming my point while launching a personal attack"
It's time you knew.
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What about the cost of the satellite itself though? The whole point of putting it in orbit is to get really good images, necessitating exceptional optics.
I read that there were a couple of spares donated by the DoD. I wonder if they could be refurbished and used.
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Mirrors that size aren't really that expensive. The whole telescope isn't very expensive, compared to the launch cost, and the other stuff you have to do to make sure it's going to work because launching it is so expensive. I worked out the prices a while ago; for the price of one Nancy Roman (which uses the donated NRO optics) you get something like 16 thirty-metre telescopes on the ground.
Re: Hubble will be replaced (Score:2)
That all got lost in academic greed. They got handed telescopes and mirrors figured and polished for visible light looking down.
Instead of saying "Thank you!" the WFIRST team decided that they needed to re-engineer it for different wavebands which meant expensive refinishing of the mirror.
It may still fly as the Nancy Roman telescope, but about 15 years after the donation occured and a billion plus dollars and several rounds of cancellation and Congressional haggling later.
All the worst instincts learned by
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For perspective, planning for JWST started in 1996. Any Hubble replacement is unlikely to be funded, built, and launched in less than a decade.
<Opinion>
Goddard Space Flight Center turns down hundreds of requests for time on Hubble per year. I *feel* like there is a business opportunity to sell time on an equivalent platform if you could get one flying. Cheap access to space unlocks both commercial space telescopes and asteroid mining. The latter practically requires & guarantees the developmen
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I think we'll be seeing a revolution in the way satellites are designed and built that will seem like a regression in some ways. Much of the complexity of a modern day satellite is in packing as much function into as little weight and space as possible. With launch cost being a minute fraction of satellite development cost, we can reverse the tradeoffs. Need to carry along 50 tons of fuel or reaction mass? No problem. That could be done in a single launch or any amount could be handled if you build the sate
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That's an easy prediction to make, because Hubble's successor is already being built. The Nancy Grace Roman telescope is basically Hubble with a much wider field of view, and will be launched in 2027.
Thinking Twice? (Score:2)
It's funny but I also thought retiring Hubble was a bad idea. Of course, because of shuttle damage concerns, the WH at the time retired Hubble in terms of not being able to service it in-orbit any longer; there was that one last mission. NASA pretty much said another 10 to 15 years of life based on use and that it would be superseded by the JWST so is this just sentimentality?
Crew Dragon isn't suitable for EVA and repair missions of this nature, If NASA wants to continue funding Hubble how exactly will it g
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I dont think its a case of “thinking twice”, I think its a case of the people heavily invested in Hubble and its output making one final plea to not be superseded or lose funding opportunities.
JWST has a different set of priorities, as does the NGR and other planned orbital observatories, and those priorities are managed by different teams than the Hubble, so those peeps about to lose their priority observatory time (as they get to choose the schedule) are making noise about that.
Unless science
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/. doesn't render unicode, your system is probably rendering the ellipsis with it. I've never had /. alter any of my punctuation, only had the lame filter trip on it.
Punctuation (Score:2)
Also, anyone else noticed Slashdots commenting system alters your comments without notifying you? It changes use of punctuation, for example it removes ellipsis points, which alters the meaning of sentences.
Either use ASCII-only punctuation (so type three separated dots: "...") or use HTML entities (but … isn't white-listed, so it won't work for elipsis) /. sucks at unicode so do not use the autocorrect of your phone: the resulting unicode code-point is very likely going to be removed. (only a few accented characters are whitelisted. Even smartquotes break).
as other have pointed,
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Hubble will last 1000 years (Score:2)
And then, in an unfortunate mistake, it will be destroyed by Earth's military force under the command of General Webelo Zapp Brannigan.
Well, yeah (Score:2)
This all makes sense so much that it doesnt feel like news. So long as Hubble still works therell always be scientists who will have its time filled up with tasks to perform. There's probably enough science to take up a few Hubbles worth of time I imagine.
I remember reading how they have kept coming up with new ways to control it as it has lost some reaction wheels so at some point it will have the error they finally can't correct for but not before then will it make it's retirement dunk.
It seems like the
Never let (Score:2)
a good instrument go to waste.
If we could do a repair/upgrade/refuel, it could last even longer than 10 more years.
Could we have a space qualifed Raspberry Pi by then?
Because, dang we have made some mad improvements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Space Pi (Score:2)
Could we have a space qualifed Raspberry Pi by then?
Suprisingly [wikipedia.org] ( we do [astro-pi.org].
Though for now it's "qualified" only in the sense that it's guaranteed not to start a fire in the ISS.
There's no rad hardened version of it (from what I've read it merely counts on the case for additional protection) and some testing by the NASA for cubesats [nasa.gov] tend to show that Raspberry Pis can withstand some radiation exposure and keep running.
It hasn't reached the large redundancy and qualification to run mission-critical code.
(Though given the low price one could probably imagine equi
"We need t name this new tele we're building." (Score:2)
"What should it be?"
"Whatever it is, it should not rhyme with 'garbage' or people will make fun of it."