Hubble's doom in the stars: NASA to retire its telescope

[Judi Lynn]

Jan. 17, 2004, 2:06AM

Hubble's doom in the stars: NASA to retire its telescope
By PATTY REINERT
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau


WASHINGTON -- Two days after President Bush redirected NASA toward the moon and Mars, the space agency on Friday announced the first casualty: the Hubble Space Telescope

"This is a sad day," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's chief scientist and a four-time shuttle astronaut. The decision shook the astronomy world.

Grunsfeld said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe made the decision and broke the news to workers at Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland on Friday morning, saying a planned space shuttle mission to service the telescope would be canceled.

The bus-size telescope, which has been sending home spectacular images of the universe for over a decade and forced the rewriting of astronomy textbooks, will continue its mission until it wears out -- likely by 2007 or 2008, Grunsfeld said.

Then NASA will launch a robotic spacecraft to grab the telescope and guide it through the Earth's atmosphere to splash down in a remote area of an ocean. (snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/2358102

[opihimoimoi]

1. Extreme and Persistent LOLOness on a Grand scale, Arrrrgggghhh

[Guaranteed]

2. We just got the thing fixed not too long ago.

For criminy's sake. It's working great, now, of course- and now that it is, Bush's is abandoning it. That's great. Just great.

[ixion]

3. heh... that's exactly what I was thinking

for many of those years, hubble couldn't see worth a hoot. It was only, what, five -- six years ago that hubble got glasses? Why retire something like that w/o a plan to replace it? Why replace it when it is working?

Sigh. The people who make policy in this country are not at all in touch with reality, IMHO.


:eyes:

[Briarius]

4. They are planning on replacing it

The next generation is the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to go up in 2011. Here's the site on it: http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[Vitruvius]

5. The Webb is an IR telescope; Hubble primarily works the visible & UV;

the Webb complements the Hubble; it does not replace it. And there's a whole string of observations that astronomers wanted to make using the Hubble and JWST to get both visible and IR images of interesting objects; e.g early galaxies formed when the Universe was young.

But Bu$h is scuttling the Hubble when it has years & years of good science left in it. And these observations will not be done.

And just as we've seen objects with the Hubble that we'd like to inspect in the IR with the Webb, we will also see objects with the Webb that we'll want to inspect in the visible & UV with the Hubble. But Bu$h is scuttling the Hubble. Which means that much of what we find with the JWST will be incomplete -- because we won't have the data in the visible and UV that the Hubble could have provided.

The Bu$h gang is spinning the JWST as a "replacement" for the Hubble; but that's a pack of lies. The two were designed to work together.

P.S: If the Webb has any Hubble-type problems, it's ruined, for it will be in orbit about 1.5 million km behind the earth & moon -- too far away to be serviced. If the Bu$h gang is directing any of the contracts to its' incompetent big-business cronies, there will be such problems and the Webb will probably end up more-or-less useless. Spacecraft design & construction is an unforgiving art.

[TomNickell]

22. They'll keep using it 'til it breaks....

That should be a few more years.

The Hubble has been in some jeopardy since the Shuttle breakup. There's one fewer shuttle to go around; and, when they launch again, they will be behind on -other- work. Plus, the Hubble is in an orbit that will not allow the Shuttle to get from Hubble to the Space Station, so no lifeboat in case of more broken tiles.

Overall, the American manned space program is in a bad way.

[panzerfaust]

6. Blinded by the Right

A major blow to science and the usual glitz over substance of this administration.

It might even go deeper than that– for much of what has been learned from Hubble data is anathema to the religious beliefs of our masters. Not a great leap to think that the faithful will be happy to see it go.

I do wonder about the fate of the orbital scope that was to replace Hubble and which was scheduled to be launched in 2010. My thought is that the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) is more likely to be launched in 2110 than 2010 - Assuming that there are any astronomers left by then.

But wait – was not NGST already canceled ... If you don't know, then who does? Who is minding the store in our republic?

Who was it that who observed “people get the government they deserve?” We, the people, let the coup succeed.

[GreenGreenLimaBean]

7. Hubble proved the Universe is > 13Billion Years.

This is why they are letting it burn up in the atmosphere. According
to the wing-nuts the Earth and the Universe are only 8000years old.
Anything that contradicts their dogma is akin to sacrilege.

[donsu]

8. they all walked on glass shards to get Hubble up & running and

now it's a throwaway? super wonderful Hubble is a throwaway?!

[KansDem]

11. Yeah...next time make the thing out of styrofoam.

Maybe with a plastic lid and straw sticking out of it, then it won't be so hard to throw away...

[Endangered Specie]

9. Alas, alll good thing must come to an end

But this is too soon for one of the most pivitol tools of astronomy in modern history.

May it rest in peace.

Maybe the Europeans can go up and fix it when we are done with it??? Surely that can be done. That would be a good boost to the ESA after the whole Beagle II thing.

[Fovea]

10. Headline should read

White House pokes NASA in the eye, touts superiority of monocular vision.

[jpgray]

12. Again, this is a disaster for astronomers the world over. (nt)

[leftofthedial]

13. it is to be replaced by a faith-based telescope

The St. James Telescope, in 2012.

the St. James Telescope will be designed to see no more than 6000 light years into space, since there can be nothing any farther away than that, Gawd's magnificent creation being no older than 6000 years, don't you know.

Hubble obviously has been malfunctioning.

[bhunt70]

20. thats hilarious.

[ThoughtCriminal]

14. Plus they will have to spen $300 million to de-orbit it

"Now the plan is to build a robotic rocket that would go up, attach itself to the telescope and fire its engine to brake Hubble out of orbit and drop it in the ocean."
"Paradoxically, Dr. Spergel said, the cost of developing such a rocket, estimated at $300 million or more, would come out of the NASA astronomy budget. It is, he said, another double whammy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/science/17HUBB.html?ex=1074920400&en=afd98b10efeb0472&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE


I have to wonder if it would be cheaper and more effective to move the telescope to match the ISS orbit. There, it could be maintained without having to launch seperate missions.

[Bozita]

15. This toon shows the real reason for killing the Hubble

courtesy of nostamje

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1024619&mesg_id=1024619

[falcon]

16. space bombs

lazer shit and star wars. Bush the c**ksucker has gotta start blowing up the universe instead of studing it with a telescope.

[TrogL]

17. Why not just use the robot to push it into a higher orbit

This is ridiculous.

The Japanese and others are talking about a manned space mission. Maybe they could be prevailed upon to service it.

[rman]

23. Bush doesn't want to spend money on another service flight,

which was already planned but is now canceled. Service is needed to replace failing gyroscopes. Without gyroscopes (needed to aim the telescope) there'd be no point in pushing it to a higher orbit.

Bush wants to go to the moon and mars, but apparently he does not want scientific exploration of space.

[demigoddess]

18. when i heard this on the BBC news last night

All I could do was cuss and cuss. Name one thing that * has not destroyed since entering the white house. It is as if he just has to destroy every thing ever done before he came into office just to prove that he was actually in office. You know, the legacy thing. Karma is a bitcha and I think he will get his in triplicate.

[flaminbats]

19. great strategy, no Hubble 2 or additional money even required.

time to just let the old one waste away in space, and then claim this "was all the better!"

NASA needs sufficient funding more than anything else, not more reckless political announcements and overblown cosmic expectations..:puffpiece:

[daleo]

21. Here's hoping that this is just a NASA ploy

In the city that I live in, whenever the administration wants to get a bit of a tax hike they threaten to close down the swimming pools. This may be similar.

To many people, the study of the cosmos and the Hubble Telescope are synonymous. NASA may be saying this to mobilize political support among the public. Many in NASA may not be crazy about * either, so this may be their way to show that displeasure. Along the lines of, vote for *, and we lose the Hubble.

Personally I would hate to see it go. It has produced some of the most inspiring imagery of the universe. I just bought a calendar of Hubble pictures, and they are grand.

Here's hoping this will not happen.

[Sialia]

24. The rationale is either bogus or cowardly

The stated rationale, that it is for "safety" reasons, is either bogus or it is cowardly. I don't mean to take lightly the astronauts' lives, but I have considerable inside information and I know that they understand the risks and accept them.

The claim is that if the Shuttle goes only to the ISS (International Space Station) they could check the tiles while docked, and if there's a problem, they could wait at the ISS until a rescue mission could be organized, or they run out of oxygen or some other critial supply, whichever comes first....This obviously assumes that if there's another accident it would be of exactly the same type as the last, and that some other malfunction wouldn't occur, say on liftoff. But O'Keefe has decreed that henceforth *only* ISS missions will be flown.

So the result is that the Shuttle now exists solely to complete the ISS, and the ISS exists only as a destination for the shuttle, since as soon as it's completed it will be abandoned and probably literally ditched in order to pursue the Moonbase fantasy. All of the billions spent on the ISS project might as well have been burned. One might wonder why we are throwing good money after bad to finish the damn thing. It's supposedly due to "international obligations" but I suspect the Russians could be persuaded to give it up. More likely it's because of contracts with aerospace companies.

The new instruments for the Hubble are ready and are a significant improvement. With each service mission, new and better instruments have been/were supposed to be installed, thus increasing its capabilities.

The only worthwhile remaining mission for the Shuttle is SM4 (Service Mission 4, for the HST) but the current NASA administrator is strictly a bean counter and a good Republican footsoldier. He has no interest in science or any real interest in the space program at all.

The fact that this fits the new Prime Directive is just a coinkydink, no doubt </sarcasm>. But if they were really worried about safety they could have a second shuttle on the pad (KSC has two launch pads) and ready to go if something goes wrong.

If we don't have the courage to undertake this mission, I don't see how we will be willing to accept the huge risks that the Moon/Mars trips would entail. But then, I don't doubt that the Moon/Mars project will fizzle out. It requires stamina and dedication to carry out a project of that magnitude. The Bush administration has no interest in it except for political value (proving he has the "vision thing") for the upcoming election.