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The Case Against Hubble

by Bruce Moomaw
Sacramento CA (SPX) Aug 18, 2004

As is widely known, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has ruled out any final Shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope and install its two final planned instruments: the Wide Field Camera-3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
He has done this because Hubble is in a radically different orbital inclination from the ISS. This means that any Shuttle sent up to repair it, which became stranded in orbit (after the crew, for example, discovered reentry shield damage of the type that destroyed Columbia), would be unable to match orbits with and dock with the Station to provide its crew with an emergency shelter (on which to wait for later rescue by another Shuttle or Russian Soyuz spacecraft).

Instead, O'Keefe has now become an eager fan of a proposed robotic Hubble repair mission.

It will, in any case, be necessary to launch a "Deorbit Stage" that will automatically rendezvous and dock with Hubble. After Hubble finally becomes scientifically useless, the Deorbiter can eventually be used to bring Hubble down over a selected safe spot, rather than the telescope eventually burning up at some uncontrollable location, where any of its large surviving pieces might hit some unlucky Earthling.

The rest of the story can be read here.

Experts Calculate Risk of Uncontrolled Hubble Re-entry

More about the future of the legendary Hubble can be find here.

Recommended Hubble Repair Mission Gets Measured Response from Congress

By Brian Berger
Space News Staff Writer
posted: 09 December 2004
09:36 am ET

WASHINGTON -- The announcement Wednesday by the National Academy of Sciences that NASA scrap its plan to robotically repair the Hubble Space Telescope and instead plan a manned shuttle mission for the endeavor was met by by congressional leaders with both support and reservations.

Rep. Bart Gordon (Tenn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, endorsed the report’s central recommendation and urged NASA to follow the committee’s advice and conduct a shuttle-based servicing mission.

“Their central recommendation is unambiguous: NASA should pursue a Shuttle servicing mission to Hubble,” Gordon said in a statement. “I hope that NASA will heed the Academies' assessment and move forward to implement its recommendations so that Hubble can continue its program of scientific exploration and discovery for years to come."

read the Full Story at Space,com

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Ulli

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Canadian space robot may make Hubble service call

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Longueuil, Quebec, January 5, 2005 - Dr. Marc Garneau, President of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), is pleased to announce that NASA has given MDA of Brampton, Ontario, the go-ahead for a mission design concept for a possible Hubble Telescope Rescue Mission. Based on Dextre, Canada's space robotics technology, MDA will design a concept that could support the repair and upgrade of the Hubble space telescope, if NASA conducts such a mission.

Dextre is the dual-armed robot built by MDA under contract to the Canadian Space Agency to conduct exterior maintenance of the International Space Station. The robot is specially designed to perform complex tasks in the harsh environment of space, such as installing and removing batteries, power supplies, computer units, and scientific payloads. It will be adapted to replace batteries, gyroscopes, and perhaps an instrument on the $1.5-billion scientific Hubble Space Telescope to extend its life.

Read the full story here.

The People's Telescope: Wrangling Over Hubble's Fate

16 March 2005

The Hubble telescope is the Ansel Adams of space photography. Its crystal-clear keepsake images have brought great insight into the grand majesty of the cosmos.

While offering clues as to the ultimate fate of the universe, Hubble's own fate now rests within a murky swirl of risk assessments, shuttle safety guidelines, novel telerobotic hardware and, of course, politics and budgetary wrangling.

Next week, NASA will hold a major review regarding the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) with dozens of engineers and other experts. The gathering is seen by some industry sources as a make-or-break event for any possibility of saving the observatory.
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Griffin promises to revisit Hubble decision

Michael Griffin, the president's nominee to become the next NASA administrator, told senators Tuesday that he will revisit a decision to cancel a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope once the shuttle returns to flight. Griffin, speaking during a confirmation hearing held by the Senate Commerce Committee, said that he considered the shuttle essentially a new spacecraft in the wake of the upgrades made after the Columbia accident, which warranted taking another look at the January 2004 decision to cancel the servicing mission once the agency has had a chance to digest the lessons learned from the first post-Columbia mission, scheduled for launch in mid-May. Griffin said that a robotic servicing mission was "off the place" because it would be too technologically challenging to complete in time. Griffin said the shuttle return to flight would be his top priority, followed by examining ways to speed up the development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle. Griffin was widely praised by senators at the hearing, some of whom sought to expedite his nomination. A planned vote by the committee Tuesday afternoon, however, was postponed at the request of Sen. George Allen (R-VA), who sought more detailed answers from Griffin about NASA's aeronautics programs.


Full Story


more Links

http://www.flatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050413/NEWS02/504130382/1007/news02

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0504/12griffin/

http://space.com/news/griffin_hearing_050412.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47810-2005Apr12.html

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-98473sy0apr13,0,4619244.story?coll=dp-headlines-topnews

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©