| Subject: Hubbble telescope to die & be destoyed |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 12:26:05 02/15/04 Sun
Due to Boosh's demand for conquering the moon & Mars, the hubble space telescope will be left to burn out & be destroyed.
We've learned more about science, space, & the universe from the telescope than any other mission to space ever. We continue to learn more on a daily basis. No ground-based or future space telescopes will be able to perform the vast amount of scientific research that the telescope is currently during... & it's designed to be up-gradable!
The telescope has changed our understanding of how the universe works. However, with no more service missions planned, it will probably stop functioning by 2007.
The most powerful eye on the universe is facing premature blindness.
The space shuttle will no longer be making maintenance trips to the Hubble telescope, as the United States space program refocuses Boosh's efforts on coquering the moon & Mars.
A shuttle service trip had been planned for 2006. It would have extended the life of the Hubble to 2010 or more. Without that mission, the telescope's stabilizing gyroscopes will cease to function and its batteries will go dead. The Hubble, which has revolutionized the study of astronomy, may be out of commission by 2007.
Astronomers and space enthusiasts are already mourning the eventual loss of one of the more important scientific instruments of all time. There was a tremendous amount of science to be done with the Hubble and it's a shame to have to turn it off prematurely.
Orbiting free from the distorting effects of the atmosphere -- the telescope has provided images of unprecedented clarity of the distant cosmos.
It has peered into dusty nebulae to witness the birth of infant stars and captured ancient stars in their death throes. Hubble has also enabled scientists to estimate the age of our universe at 13.7 billion years. But even more important than the awe-inspiring pictures, data gathered by the telescope have fundamentally altered scientists' understanding of the forces that make the universe work.
Before the Hubble was sent aloft in 1990, scientists thought that they had a pretty good idea of how the universe started and where it is heading. Under the now conventional theory, the universe began with the "Big Bang" from an infinitesimally small point. The first stars were created and came together in clusters known as galaxies, which flew farther and farther apart.
Cosmologists have assumed that the universe will go in either of two directions. The force of gravity from all the matter in the universe will eventually pull the galaxies back together again in a cataclysmic "Big Crunch." Or gravity will be insufficient to reverse the outward movement and the galaxies will continue expanding at a constant rate forever.
When the Hubble was put to work to resolve the issue, it produced a completely unexpected result -- neither scenario is correct. The universe, according to telescope's measurement, is expanding outward at an accelerating rate. Even if the universe didn't end in a Big Crunch, it was supposed to keep flying apart at a steady, unchanging pace. Astronomers are at a loss to explain why the expansion is getting faster.
It means there is some big piece of our understanding of the physics of the universe that is incomplete right now. No ordinary matter could... counteract gravity. So there is some force in nature that controls the behaviour of the universe as a whole and we didn't even know it existed until the Hubble. Physicists have dubbed the mystery force "dark energy" and are now trying to make sense of it.
Hubble is NASA's greatest achievement since the Apollo moon landings. It has remained at the "cutting edge" of science because astronauts have been able to remove its old parts and replace them with updated instruments during four previous shuttle service missions.
In fact, spacewalking astronauts were able save the Hubble from an ignominious fate. It originally produced blurry images because of a manufacturing flaw in its main light-gathering mirror. Astronauts put what amounted to corrective glasses on the Hubble and restored its vision.
The next service mission was supposed to take $200-million (U.S.) worth of new instruments to the Hubble as well as replace its aging batteries and gyroscopes. The instruments have already been built, but they seem destined to gather dust now that the mission has been scrubbed.
The Hubble scientists learned about the cancellation just two days after U.S. President George W. Bush announced plans to create a moon base for a future human trip to Mars some time around 2030. But he has pledged to add only $1-billion to NASA's $86-billion budget for the next five years. At the same time, the space agency has been instructed to divert $11-billion from existing programs to support the development of the technology needed for Boosh's new conquest of space.
Senior NASA officials have told scientists that the $500-million shuttle mission to the Hubble was cancelled for safety reasons -- not just to save money. After the Columbia was destroyed last year because of damage to its heat-resistant re-entry tiles, an investigation board concluded that astronauts need the capacity to inspect and repair the shuttle -- as well as have a haven if the spacecraft can't be fixed.
Those recommendations are quite addressable if the shuttle is going only to the space station, said Anne Kinney, NASA's director of astronomy and physics. The Hubble and the space station are in different orbits -- and the shuttle can't carry enough fuel to fly between the two.
She said that making the trip to the Hubble safe would "require the development of a lot of single-use technology that does not relate to anything else the agency is doing." So the service mission was shelved. "It was a hard decision . . . but I really think it's the right decision."
But I see the space station as an expensive useless space-junk toy that has never performed any useful science.
The three remaining space shuttles will be used solely to complete U.S. commitments to finish the construction of the international space station by about 2010. They will then be retired from service to save money for the development of a new spaceship capable fullfillin Boosh's demands.
But Douglas Osheroff, a member of the Columbia accident investigation board, believes that the means could have been found to keep Hubble going and insists that the Boosh administration has simply not set aside enough money for the space agency to carry out its new marching orders.
"This is very typical of NASA making a pact with the devil -- the devil being a promise from a president who is not going to be in office when it comes time to deliver," said Dr. Osheroff, who is also chairman of the physics department at Stanford University.
The cancellation of the service mission has created such a furor among space enthusiasts that NASA's administrator, Sean O'Keefe, has said he will ask the chairman of the Columbia accident board, Harold Gehman, to review the Hubble matter and "offer his unique perspective."
But few expect NASA to reverse its decision to scrub the shuttle flight.
Ironically, NASA must eventually send some kind of rescue mission to the Hubble. In time, its orbit will deteriorate, raising the possibility that it will come crashing down on a populated area. The Hubble is about the size of a bus. NASA had originally planned to use the shuttle to bring the Hubble back to Earth and display it in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington. Now, at an estimated cost of $300-million, it will have to develop a robotic craft that can direct the Hubble to fall safely into the ocean.
Meanwhile, astronomers are savouring the time the Hubble has left. "It's a loss and we will never know how much of a loss because we don't know what we would have discovered," Dr. McCarthy said.
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