Starting this in the Pit, because if it’s true I’m really pissed off.
Disclaimer: I found this on a blogger site. I don’t how accurate this is; I’ve been googling and can’t find confirmation. If someone can debunk this, that’d be a huge relief.
My googling showed that the next Hubble service mission was supposed to be in 2004, but was pushed to 2005, which would have let Hubble live until about 2010. If all this is true, it looks like Hubble will be offline for good next year. 
So far the official word from NASA is that the next service mission will be in 2005 and another is planned for '07 or '08.
It just hasn’t been the same since the Satellite of Love hit it.
This National Geographic article says that (as of 12/30/03) there is a planned servicing mission in 2006 and possibly another one afterwards.
It sounds like your blogger is taking a fact (2 of the 6 gyros have failed and they need 3 to work) and translating that into “they are letting Hubble die”
From everything, I’ve read and heard, they fully intend to keep it operational for at least a few more years.
A lot depends on when the shuttle can fly again, of course. IF more gyros fail or something else happens, NASA is not in a position to repair it right now since no shuttle flights are occuring. That’s not the same as deliberately letting it fall though.
Well, the blogger claims to work as a software engineer for the Space Telescope Science Institute, so he would probably know what he’s talking about. The way the story is written, it sounded like this is a directive that was just released today.
Before the Columbia disaster, there was a plan to bring it down in 2010 or so and put it in the Smithsonian. Now that is being considered too risky for the astronauts. They should at least send it into the atmosphere for a long slow burn rather than leave it in orbit.
NASA cancels final Hubble telescope servicing mission
I’ll bet that the Kuiper mission is dead too. It almost has to be, when you shift 12 billion of a 14 billion budget over to the “vision thing.”
Damn.
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
You really didn’t expect Hubble to have an unlimited mission life, did you?
The current plan was to have Hubble last until at least 2010. There even some were hopes of lasting until 2013. The next space telescope,
James Webb Space Telescope – and one can certainly wonder about the fate of that effort as well – won’t be online until 2011 at the earliest.
talking like Yoda I am
“There were even some hopes that”
Well, no, but it’s pretty galling that a mission which has churned out genuine scientific data practically non-stop since launch (and still going) is to be canned in favour of an entirely frivolous moon shot (IMO). That said, the shuttle fleet badly needs retiring, and it’s hard to see how any servicing replacement could satisfactorily be implemented in time. If it were me taking the decisions I’d probably have done the same thing, but funnelled the savings into bringing the NGST forwards if possible. As the Nasa chief scientist said, it’s a sad day, but really inevitable. If the James Webb project becomes a casualty of the latest “vision thing”, then it’d be an outrage.
I seem to remember reading a few months ago (too lazy to dig up a cite, sorry), that NASA was beginning to consider how/when to ‘deorbit’ the Hubble at the end of it’s life, now that the idea of bringing it back to the Smithsonian is not a realistic option (too bad, the Hubble would’ve been an awesome exhibit). Theory being that they set it in a controlled reentry path while they still can, so that it reenters over an ocean rather the coming in uncontrolled and possibly breaking up over land.
IIRC, the Hubble’s orbit has to be boosted occasionally, since it’s not in geosynchronis (sp) orbit.
I’m close to calling “Cite?” on this, but I won’t. A large part of the anxiety over launching the Hubble scope is that it exceeds the landing payload capacity of any of the shuttles. If the crew had to about and land on the African emergency runway, there was a painfully small chance that any of them could have survived, because the gear would have collapsed under the weight.
Fortunately, the launch worked.
No, but a question that needs to be asked is how is the replacement for the hubble going to be affected? There had been talk of a telescope that could see earth sized planets around other stars being launced sometime between 2010 and 2015.
Not possible without the shuttle, I’m afraid. Hubble has no maneuvering rockets of its own.
Just to clear this up, the cancellation of the Hubble servicing mission had NOTHING to do with the new initiatives. O’Keefe cancelled the mission for safety reasons ONLY, and the decision had been in the works for a while.
NASA’s current plan for shuttle safety is to only fly missions to the ISS, where the thermal protection system can be inspected. Options for building inspection robots and repair kits were deemed unworkable.
Again, would you guys PLEASE go and read the details of NASA’s future plans before claiming that all science is about to end? In particular, look at the budget chart I linked to in the thread in Great Debates, and link again below.
This whole new plan has been described by some as, “Cancel everything NASA does and focus on manned missions to the Moon and Mars”. This is just not correct. A better description is, "Cancel all the non-exploratory stuff NASA does, primarily the Shuttle and ISS, and pour all the money into exploration, INCLUDING robotic missions and space telescopes. Research using robotic missions gets an INCREASE in funding.
Here’s a link to that budget chart for the next 16 years: Strategy Based on Long Term Affordibility. Things to notice on this chart:
[ul]
[li]Today, the ‘exploration’ budget (which contains the current Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn missions, and includes other robotic missions) gets roughly 3 billion a year. This goes up dramatically until by FY2020 when it’s getting almost five times as much money per year.[/li][li]Starting this year, “Human/Robotic technology” gets a serious funding boost.[/li][li]The Crew Exploration Vehicle is funded OUTSIDE of the exploration budget. A new office is being created for the manned missions, and its funding comes almost completely from funding freed up by killing the Shuttle. NOTHING comes out of the exploration budget.[/li][li]“Aeronautics and other science activities” gets a modest budget cut for the next three years, but then the budget goes up and continues to climb until there is significantly more money being put into it than there is today.[/li][/ul]
Can’t you guys put partisanship aside even for something you care passionately about? Under Clinton, NASA’s budget was cut continually, with nary a peep from the space afficionados. Under Bush, NASA has received funding increases every year. Now he’s taken a step that everyone who knows anything about space knew was necessary: dumping the albatross of the space shuttle and ISS, and starting from scratch with new spacecraft. NASA’s funding increases get even bigger, and all the money goes to exploration instead of making ferry trips into LEO and back. This is a great thing, and all you guys can do is bitch.
The same thing’s going on over at Slashdot. I never would have believed it. An American president announces that we’re through with hanging out in LEO, and we’re finally going to build a modular, sustainable effort to send humans throughout the solar system. You’d think the space nuts would be jumping for joy. But over there, they’re just whining and complaining. Can’t get past the fact that it’s the hated George Bush who’s doing this.
Now, some missions may be cancelled. With a revamp this massive, it’s inevitable. Perhaps Pluto/Kuiper will still be axed. But the reason will not be because the President decided the money is better spent on seniors or building a factory in his home state - it’ll be because we’re now looking at bigger, grander plans in space and want to start from scratch with a coherent program. So keep an open mind.
Simple answer…
Hubble is OLD
VERY OLD
Old technology means keeping thousands of people trained in Z80 circuitry, which probably predates many of their impregnations.
By the time anything reaches the launch pad, it’s outdated, old fashioned, ,but well tested and capable of surviving the rigours of space travel. Hubble did us well.
Sam beat me to it. This is about safety, not money. From now on the shuttle is only going into orbits where it can reach the ISS. Hubble is not in that orbit, and it’s difficult if not impossible for the shuttle to switch orbits like that mid-flight.
I can’t find the cite at the moment, (I believe it was a reliable source) but I’ve recently read that the only way a shuttle is going to visit Hubble is if there’s another shutttle on the pad ready to go in case something goes wrong. Not feasible.
I’m saddened too, but I look forward to the day we have observatories on the Moon.
Well, it was cancelled because under the new priorities it was decided that the money required to ensure safety while servicing Hubble. While it’s quite possible (probable, even) that post-Columbia, such a decision would have been taken even without the new priorities, to say that they have nothing to do with it is stretching it somewhat. At the least they made the decision more clear cut, hence the rapid move after the presidential announcement.
Agreed, and the latter in particular makes me extremely happy. Reading around, it seems like the Webb might (but it’s a big might) be brought forward a year (this was from a Hubble scientist’s blog, the link to which I’ve now mislaid, unfortunately).
Well, it’s a little hypocritical to whinge about partisanship, then try and explain why Clinton was worse. I think what a lot of people are questioning is what sending people back to the moon achieves. It’s not a practical journey stage for a Mars shot, we’ve been there before, and it’s hard to see what it could achieve that a much cheaper robotics mission couldn’t. While I agree that the ISS and shuttle achieve very little, a moon base would just be another white elephant. I just don’t see the point in the timeframe they’re talking about, and I speak as someone who has worked on human spaceflight at Johnson (specifically, the eventually-canned escape vehicle for the ISS).
Or, they disagree with the plans. For fairly obvious reasons, Nasa’s work is something a lot of Americans feel very strongly about, with a sense of ownership. There are bound to be strong discussions, and frankly I don’t think that it makes a difference whose plans they are. I thought the slashdot discussions were remarkably free of any of the “shrub” or “space cowboy” crap you might expect if it were politics, so stop trying to throw this partisanship stuff around. No-one even mentioned Bush in this thread until you came along.
Well, quite. It’ll be interesting to see what happens, and in the short term the Shuttle definitely did need retiring (the Economist speculated that this whole moon/mars thing might be a carrot to get the Shuttle wound down, although they didn’t give the idea a great deal of credibility). I don’t think it’s reasonable to put 7 lives at risk to gain 2-3 years use from an ageing telescope, but to expect people to be instantly happy with the demise of such an iconic achievement is unrealistic, really.