Hubble Space Telescope

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 11:52 am

Happy 13th, Hubble!

Boomerang · Post by **Boomerang** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 5:34 pm

Thats one of my Favorite Hubble images. Its hard to believe that its been up there 13 years now and is expected to be used into 2011 when a newer telescope is launched. Unfortunately i read a couple of weeks ago that they are worried the columbia accident may make servicing hubble difficult. They want all future shuttle missions to beable to go to the iss so the can be inspected for thermal protection system damage but in order to capture hubble a shuttle couldnt reach the iss. There is only one more definate servicing planned during the next 8 years it looks questionable whether they will beable to do it.

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 12:42 pm

Well, the 4th Hubble servicing mission has been canned. It's a shame because the gyroscopes need servicing and two new Hubble instruments are already built. The Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph cost a combined $167 million and would have provided unprecedented peeks into the formation of the cosmos, astronomers say.

There is no precedent in the history of astronomy for removing a telescope from operation before a better one is online.

According to American Astronomical Society president Catherine Pilachowski, astrophysicist John Grunsfeld- who announced the decision last week- said last year, before the Columbia incident, that "he knew how dangerous the shuttle was but that the astronauts knew how important Hubble is to scientists and to everyone in the world."

-Compiled from Space.com reports
The Space.com Hubble Index

MOTTS · Post by **MOTTS** » Fri Jan 30, 2004 4:00 pm

NASA to Review Plan to Phase Out Hubble :
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... ubble_plea

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Fri Jan 30, 2004 8:32 pm

Good. As I said before, HST is important and just letting it burn up would be a bad, and unprecedented, move. The risk is no more than it's ever been and any astronaut that would take the assignment would know the risk and accept it because HST is important.

ethlar04 · Post by **ethlar04** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 12:48 pm

NASA now plans to keep Hubble up and continue to service and use it. Good new for all my friends at the Applied Physics Labs, there were about 500 people who would have lost their jobs if Hubble was scrapped.

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 10:56 pm

Yaaaaaaaayyyy!!! Let's go Hubble, let's go! *Clap*Clap*

meg · Post by **meg** » Sat Jan 31, 2004 11:55 pm

wow benji! ...and im special!!??!! hehe.

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Mon Feb 09, 2004 12:31 pm

Where did you find that news? Anything I see still says it's coming down. In fact, NASA's 2005 budget request calls for $300 million over the next five years to plan how a robotic mission to de-orbit Hubble would work. So, $300 mill for planning, plus the cost of building the motor for the deorbit and the cost of that mission to get it up there and successfuly deorbit HST (if we're spending $300 mill just on planning, this isn't going to be cheap). Don't forget to consider the $126 mill we just spent on instruments that were supposed to be installed on this servicing mission.

I would say we're looking at something along the lines of a billion bucks to get this thing down. A shuttle mission costs something like half of that. Between the incredible science and the incredible cost, isn't it worth it to keep Hubble going? There are probably thousands of people willing to take that trip (I sure as hell would) and the risk is no more than it was for any of the other three other servicing missions and the countless other missions that have not been able to reach Alpha. In fact, the risk is probably less due to the fact that everyone at NASA would be on their heels, watching for every little thing that could possibly be unsafe.

Bottom line: Hubble is worth the risk.

SpaceCanada · Post by **SpaceCanada** » Mon Feb 09, 2004 12:45 pm

Ever since the initial news that the Hubble may be discarded there was a giant uproar: astronomers, scientists, physicists, scientists of all kinds, and public citizens alike. This has created a huge indecision with the Hubble. I hear news that is has been removed from the budget, yet I also hear news that it may be reconsidered... oh the joys of Bush's new plans for NASA. Here is a link to a current article on CNN:

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/ ... index.html

(I realise this link may become obsolete in the future, so if it does, the scope of the article was merely the situation I described above.)

ethlar04 · Post by **ethlar04** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 11:13 pm

sorry i took a while to respond but i found out through connections at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Labs. I worked there over the summer, and still comunicate with people there, i found out that they were keeping the division working on hubble there intact, which means it is staying up there.

meg · Post by **meg** » Sun Mar 14, 2004 7:46 pm

hey you guys...
i thought you might like to sign this...
its a petition to save the hubble. i'm not sure how far it'll get, but nasas in on it somehow. i thought if we sign it, and we pass it along to others, that's a LOT of people they would get to help. so, please...pass it along!!

http://www.savethehubble.com/

from there, you can sign the one for the us and for all of the world. please help us continue to learn about the unknown!

Benji · Post by **Benji** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 11:03 am

Dear 38,000 Hubble Petitioners,

April 24th is National Astronomy Day, and a good time to make waves on
Hubble's behalf.

No logic can support the notion that while the Space Shuttle is safe enough for multiple flights to the Space Station over the next decade, it is not safe enough for even one flight to Hubble. It is disingenuous to announce bold plans for a risky manned flight to Mars while at the same time retreating from a flight to Hubble just a few hundred miles away. NASA's leadership should either defend the risk of the loss of life as justifiable given the overall benefits to mankind, or it should retreat from manned missions altogether. We can ill afford to spend another decade funding manned projects such as the Space Station and the trip to Mars, only to have them shelved when NASA realizes it has no appetite for the inherent risk. If the shuttle can not be made safe enough at any cost, then abandon it and the Space Station, and spend more resource developing a robotic solution to fix Hubble, and to launch future scientific missions. The impact of Hubble on society and the enlightening new discovery of water on Mars make it clear that for the foreseeable future there is much more to be gained, in terms of science and political capital, from robotic initiatives (Hubble is an optical robot after all) than from projects that require NASA to make the environment safe enough for a man. Let's get back to manned flights when either we as a people have decided to accept the inevitable loss of life, or at such time as we have designed a space ship that is capable of traveling at near the speed of light. Only then will the benefits outweigh the risks.

Spread the word,

Michael Paolucci
President
Savethehubble.org
Slooh.com

meg · Post by **meg** » Sat Apr 24, 2004 8:25 pm

thanks benji.
hey, im important too...I GOT ONE ALSO!!!

i however, didn't think it was that important to post.

Hubble Space Telescope

Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble Decision