Is a non-destructive de-orbit possible for the Hubble?

I'm sitting here watching the repair mission and wondering why nobody is considering saving the Hubble instead of letting it burn up on reentry?

Will the shuttle fly with the Hubble in the cargo bay? If so, why not just put it in the trunk and glide home? Or maybe we could keep it in orbit for 20 or so years until we have a space elevator built?

IMO the Hubble is the one of the greatest achievements in human history, I'd love to be able to see the Hubble in person some day.

Why would space junk put the shuttle at risk, but not put the Hubble at risk. And if the shuttle is at risk from space junk, how has the Hubble orbited for 16 years?

If Hubble were manned it would be a different story.

will probably be part of the ISS so that repairs can be done quickly by personnel already there.

As for bringing it home for repairs and then sending it back out, it would have to be brought back in several large pieces and then replaced in orbit with a very large rocket. The repair missions with the shuttle are much more cost effective, if they can be done.

The Hubble, as great as it has been, will eventually reach its limitations and need to be replaced with a new generation of telescope, probably one that combines visual, X-ray and infrared functions with others undreamed of at present. Let's just hope they dismantle it sufficiently before re entry that it doesn't kill anybody on the way down but burns up harmlessly in the stratosphere.

they could dismantle it enough to fit in the cargo bay of the shuttle and SAVE it for a museum.

The James Webb space telescope, formerly known as the Next Generation space telescope, is the space telescope that could most accurately be called "successor to Hubble."

JWST is going to be at the L2 point, on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun, but four times farther away than the moon. The benefit is that Earth's IR radiation interferes much less with the telescope's observations. But of course, we can't currently send astronauts to the L2 point.

X-ray telescopes like Chandra will probably remain close to Earth, but anything that works in the infrared and beyond will be placed far away.

It is on its way to the L2 point. It can also be considered as a Hubble successor albeit its 3.5m mirror (larger than Hubble's) will see at far infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths.

Most telescopes are being sent the to the LaGrange points, which are much further out.

Telescopes in deeper space not susceptible to the rapid heating/cooling cycles of a low earth orbit, which plays dirty tricks on things such as mirrors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6645179.stm

Far, FAR past the orbit of the ISS.

There is always little gas leaks or bits of paint and whatever that are clustered around the ISS. Movement around the station would also transfer vibrations to any telescope attached to it. The ISS is not a good platform for a deep space telescope.

If the area is space junk heavy and risky for a few days, then why hasn't hubble been hit by space junk in the same oribt the shuttle is currently in.

Area of space risky because of space junk, but the hubble been floating around with no risk for 16 years?

I do worry about the mirror cover being open so much, but the scope wouldn't really work with it closed. :)

If being hit did not hurt the hubble then it would not hurt the space shuttle, so the question could be said with the comment colliding with space debree big enough to cause a problem.

Unless you are talking in riddles.

if that is the case
:P :P :P :P

347 miles versus 220 miles.

...except of course from the greater area to get hit on the shuttle. It is that the consequences of a hit are far greater for a manned mission.

And when all is said and done, the actual risks are not that great. But nor are they vanishingly small. Things do collide catastrophically out there, and given long enough one of those things will be a man or manned craft.

This is mostly the media ghoulishly setting itself up to report the worst.

... like Bill, I am an astrophysicist and there will be constraints we are not aware of.

But alone the combination of

1) risk (actually pretty high from what I read - 1 in 60 to 1 in 80 of severe mishap for each flight to the HST orbit) and
2) cost - ballpark is 1 billion per shuttle flight

makes it not worth it to collect Hubble and bring it back through a manned space flight. It would be too expensive and too risky given that the only outcome would be a piece to be exposed in a museum.

Personally, I would love to be able to visit Hubble though, lay my hands on it and give it a hug. Silly as it sounds, I would be in tears.

No idea if there is another way of bringing it back largely unharmed through a robotic mission. This would probably also include major costs to develop - you'd need a giant heat shield, parachutes etc.

Shuttle Empty weight: 172,000 lbs (78,000 kg)
Shuttle Gross liftoff weight: 240,000 lbs (110,000 kg)
Shuttle Maximum landing weight: 230,000 lbs (100,000 kg)

Hubble's weight: 24,000 lbs

I haven't been able to find anything on the typical shuttle landing weight. Unfortunately that's the important number.

Edit: found it..

http://www.angelfire.com/nc3/faa2001/shuttle/shuttle.html
"The landing weight will vary from mission to mission and ranges from 200,000 pounds to 230,000 pounds"

Looks like it's certainly possible, but is it worth the cost?

So on the face of it, it should be plausible for the shuttle to bring it *out* of orbit. But I'm no aerospace engineer; there are probably factors I'm overlooking.

On lauch it's mostly just ballast. On reentry it acts as a heat shield first and then a lifting body (a glider) in the atmosphere. The question is if the lifting body can handle the Hubble's extra 24,000 pounds.

massively expensive thing to do for an (then) obsolete but incredibly accomplished instrument.

Let it go out in a blaze of well deserved glory instead of stuck in a corner as an underappreciated relic.

The technology is the star, not the scrap metal.

The service mission cost about a billion dollars. Bringing it down in a Shuttle would probably cost just as much. Is another exhibit in the Air&Space museum worth a billion dollars?

Actually this is probably all moot since the Shuttle is being retired as well.

Then to try to bring the Hubble down.

Spend the savings on the development and launch of new and better equipment.

... it is the full-scale "Structural Dynamic Test Vehicle"

http://collections.nasm.si.edu/code/emuseum.asp?profile=objects&newstyle=single&quicksearch=A19870193000 .

I was awestruck when I saw its true size.

It's certainly not worth any ones life to bring down a non-functioning telescope.

I think the reentry profile of the shuttle cannot handle the extra weight during it's return flight home. I'm not sure how they could shake off the added speed with all the excess payload.

I think it would be worth it though. Hubble will be some 30 years old when its life is over. It deserves to sit in the Smithsonian.

Shuttle flights are extremely expensive, as are space walks and other missions.

You are proposing a separate procedure and flight to retrieve the Hubble for what is basically sentimental or aesthetic reasons.

Space budgets are extremely tight and budgeted to get the maximum amount of science for every dollar spent. The cost benefit analysis also includes the risk to the astronauts. The shuttle has only a limited number of missions available until it is retired.

No budget or risk committee would approve a mission to get the Hubble so that it could sit in a museum.

If some rich person wanted to help, say 10-20 years out when Hubble is really about to fail, a good use of the money would be to launch an automated mission that would attach a long burn-low thrust booster engine to it, and use that to lift Hubble into a much higher, safer, and longer lasting orbit. Then, perhaps future humans with better tech could visit or more economically recover it.

Surely it is "possible" to retrieve the HST now, but after the shuttle is retired and until we come up with another space bus it is impossible.

Anyhow there are still a good number of years left in the HST and it will soon be in the best shape of it's life.

I have no idea when the HST will be retired, but the James Webb Space Telescope will be much more powerful. It has a 6.5 meter mirror, far larger than the Hubble's and is designed to operate in the infrared, where there is much less interference from interstellar dust and gases. The Jamse Webb will be able to peer so deep into space it should be able to detect the moment light "froze out" of the hot soup of particles that existed very early on in our universe. It will also be able to detect planets more easily and should be able to see when the first stars were formed.

We are in for some great treats if this new scope flies. Looking at the design I find it woefully complicated. Check it out at http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/index.html

Best,

Scuba

Especially now that they have added a docking ring to the Hubble. They could fly a robotic booster to dock with the Hubble and deliver it to a lower orbit. Assuming that we have a spacecraft with the same capabilities as the shuttle, load it up in the lower orbit and head for home. The only questions are the cost and if we will have a re-entry vehicle anywhere near as capable as the shuttle. Risk would be no greater than the typical visit to ISS orbit.

Hopefully for another decade or two.

The Shuttle program ends on 2010. By the time the Hubble has deteriorated to the point of non-functionality, the Shuttles will be in museums! And I don't think the future space vehicles will have a cargo bay to bring stuff back.

So I think it's doomed to stay there.


It's up fairly high... maybe whatever comes in the 2nd half of the 21st Century will be able to retrieve it.

it cost a tremendous amount of energy to put Hubble in orbit.

You would be better off boosting it to a higher orbit and parking it, than trying to bring it down to Earth.