NASA Weighs Robotic Mission To Aid Hubble | Washington Post

NASA Weighs Robotic Mission To Aid Hubble

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 10, 2004; Page A01

Early this year NASA had all but written off the Hubble Space Telescope, but today a robotic mission to replace worn-out batteries and gyros, and even to install new instruments, suddenly seems so doable that the agency is likely to ask for proposals to do the job in early June.

"I'm not saying it's a done deal," said Edward J. Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science. "A lot of water needs to go under the bridge, but it's looking a lot better than it did two months ago."

NASA will have to decide within seven months whether to make the trip, because it needs three years to prepare a mission by the end of 2007, when Hubble's batteries are expected to give out: "If we haven't made a decision <this year>, we'll lose the option," Weiler said.

In an interview at NASA headquarters, Weiler said the Goddard Space Flight Center received 26 responses to a Feb. 20 "request for information," inviting ideas for a robotic servicing mission. Goddard, in Greenbelt, is responsible for the telescope's engineering and maintenance.

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See the sig... vvvvvvvvvvvvvv ...I take full credit.

Replacing the optical instruments on board by remote means would be extremely difficult. I'm not so sure about that but one never knows. I am much more confident that the useful lifetime of Hubble, with its current instruments, could be extended by sending a craft up to rendezvous with the telescope. This is one of the current ideas.

I've read that there's a power and control connector at the base of the telescope that is used when it is mounted in the cradle during servicing by the space shuttle. A small craft should be able to mate with this connector mechanically - this would allow the attached craft to provide power from new solar arrays, and positional control by gyros on the attached craft. This idea has real possibilities.

There's a new space telescope on the horizon but Hubble, if given the needed resources, could continue to perform as brilliantly for years into the future as it does now.

I didn't understand why they wanted to scarp Hubble. Why have one great telescope when you can have two? Seriously...

Oh, that's right. Bush's appointed NASA Administrator doesn't like the idea of people taking risks. That's what happens when you appoint a business type to head an agency of exploration. Check out his biography: Sean O'Keefe joined the Bush Administration on inauguration day and served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget and Deputy Assistant to the President until December 2001, overseeing the preparation, management and administration of the Federal budget and government wide-management initiatives across the Executive Branch.

It's part of BushCo's running the country like a corporation.

He reminds me of a manager at an Air Force aero club I belonged to who felt the club could have a perfect safety record if no one was allowed to fly its airplanes. Seriously.

113 flights divided by 2 equals 56.5

What more does one need to know? Would you fly tomorrow, by any means, with these odds?

Is why they don't ask for volunteers for the mission to upgrade Hubble?

Space travel has always been, and will remain a dangerous venture. If they are gonna continue to use the shuttle for the space station, but feel a trip to Hubble is taking too big a risk, why don't they see if any of the shuttle astronauts want to go anyway?

They sent the original astronauts up in far more dangerous circumstances, and this seems too much like a political decision, rather than a decision based on science and risk assessment.

I'm bettin they could field a crew of men and women that would raise their hands at the opportunity.

:shrug:

The flights of the earliest astronauts were far safer than the flights of any space shuttle. The spacecraft in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs were much simpler and far more reliable. The rockets the earliest astronauts rode on were NOT more reliable than those available today but the early astronauts had a reliable means of escape - the escape tower or escape rockets. With the punch of a button, on the ground on in the air, or automatically, the spacecraft would have pulled itself away from the rocket in an instant, saving its occupant or occupants with a soft landing in the Atlantic Ocean.

These spacecraft navigated near Earth orbit, trans-lunar orbit, and lunar-orbit with no problems, and returned every crew safely.

The space shuttle has always been a very dangerous way to get to space. It is the product of Nixon's great political compromise in the early 1970s. I've been around from the beginning and I have held my breath with every launch of the space shuttle.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a national treasure, but there is no way this nation is going to risk the lives of any volunteer astronauts and 70 to 200 million dollars to send a 4 billion dollar shuttle on a mission that can be done for far less robotically.

The Hubble telescope can be saved for a lot less money.

volunteered to go fix the Hubble. Their position is that the Hubble is important and should be kept in commission as long as possible. And that one of the reasons for having a manned space program is to be able to do things like the Hubble.

These are very bright and talented people who risk their lives every time they fly -- and they have thought these matters thru. And taking a somewhat greater risk to fly a mission of enormous significance makes sense to them.

Naturally, they are all for minimizing the extra risk to the extent possible -- e.g. by having a second shuttle ready-to-go just-in-case, having an on-board repair kit, fixing the external fuel tank, etc. But exploration is risky -- and the Hubble is one of the best means of exploration we have.

And it is not surprising that astronauts think the same way as scientists on this matter -- for many of them are scientists. And all have the same motivation in life as scientists: to discover new things for the betterment of humankind.

You are correct about keeping the Hubble telescope in commission as long as possible - it's an important national asset. You are also correct that one of the reasons for manned space flight is to do things like fixing Hubble. I would love to see a manned flight to repair and upgrade Hubble - it's the best way to do it, by far - but I think the issue is that our only means of getting astronauts into orbit, the space shuttle, is notoriously unreliable.

Our 3 remaining shuttles are also national assets - and so are the brave astronauts who have volunteered to do the mission. The question is: How shall we manage the risk?

The shuttle has had two catastrophic failures in 113 flights - not exactly a good record. There have numerous other in-flight and on-the-pad problems as well that could have led to catastrophe but didn't because of good luck and good reactions by the crew and mission controllers. I think that if one looks at the number of flights required to complete the space station, and compares that with the 1 in 56 chance of a shuttle and crew loss, the answer of what to do is pretty clear.

The only safe thing to do right now is to launch shuttles only to the station - or into the the same orbit of the station - so that the station serves as a safe haven. There are plans being considered to move Hubble out of it's current orbit to an orbit with the same inclination as the station - that would make a manned repair mission workable. It would require attaching a "space tug" to it's docking adapter and moving it slowly over a period of months. It would take a huge amount of energy to do so.

The issue of having another shuttle ready to go if a Hubble mission was launched is a non-starter, unfortunately. It's just not possible to process 2 shuttles to launch status at the same time. The best estimates are that a second shuttle could be prepped for launch in something under 70 days if 3 shifts were fully manned. Some think this could be cut down to 40 days if certain safety rules are relaxed. If a shuttle had an on-orbit problem of the kind that Columbia suffered, and could not rendezvous with the station, the crew would not have a chance.

I think the best option is to move forward on an un-manned mission to dock with Hubble's docking adapter and use the attached craft to provide gyro pointing control and electricity from solar panels on the craft to supplement the power that Hubble can produce on its own. This means that the advanced camera that has already been built for Hubble would not be used but that was considered an upgrade item and not a replacement item anyway. We would still have Hubble working as well as it does now for many more years but without the new camera.

The only way to move manned flight forward is to replace the shuttle as soon as possible. The "crew exploration vehicle" concept is based on the Apollo concept of a manned module with attached service modules. The manned module would return just as the Apollo command modules did. The entire craft would be launched by an expendable launch vehicle.

I think that "back to the future" is the only way to reduce the risk and get manned flight going again.

time! we need more robotic missions and more robot development in this country. there are so many robots being developed in Japan right now... we need to catch up!

It was the first thing I wondered when I found out they knew there was a potential problem well in advance of re-entry.

But really I suspect the shuttle tragedy was another 9-11, something the administration needed to bring America together, feeling patriotic, as they marched us closer to war.

:^(

insisted sending humans into space was a waste of money.

The resources needed to accomodate humans are better spent on robotics, electronics and communications engineering/innovation.

Plus, those innovations are more likely to be applied to everyday life/marketplace.

how much does it weigh ?

boom-tiss

Cheers
Drifter