| Subject: Astronauts could save Hubble, says panel |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 07:41:31 07/14/04 Wed
In reply to:
Betty
's message, "Hubbble telescope to die & be destoyed" on 12:26:05 02/15/04 Sun
Astronauts could save Hubble, says panel
11:37 14 July 04
NewScientist.com news service
NASA must not rule out sending astronauts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, says a top-level panel of the US National Research Council. The recommendation, in an interim report released on Tuesday, directly challenges NASA's cancellation of the long-planned service mission.
Astronomers were stunned and dismayed in January when NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe decided not to send a space shuttle mission to repair Hubble. Under pressure, O'Keefe asked the NRC to review options for extending Hubble's operating life.
O'Keefe was adamant that, post-Columbia, a shuttle mission to upgrade Hubble was too risky for the astronauts. The most likely compromise had seemed to be a robotic mission.
Some kind of spacecraft will have to visit Hubble in any event, even if it is simply to bring it crashing down into the Pacific ocean. Hubble supporters proposed that this vehicle also carry replacement gyroscopes and batteries. The existing ones are expected to fail by 2007 or 2008, but replacements would extend the telescope's life until about 2013.
However, the NRC panel recommends going even further and installing two new instruments to upgrade Hubble's performance, the Wide Field Camera-3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. Already complete, the two were planned for the final service mission and would yield "compelling scientific returns," the panel writes.
Safe haven
In condemning Hubble, O'Keefe had cited the Columbia Accident Investigation Board 's observation that the International Space Station was the safest destination for shuttle flights because it could serve as a safe haven and a repair base. The Hubble mission was the only one planned not to visit the ISS.
Yet the review panel read the report differently. "The CAIB consciously accepted lower risk mitigation efforts for non-ISS missions (such as a mission to Hubble)," writes chairman Louis Lanzerotti, of Bell Laboratories, New Jersey, in a covering letter to O'Keefe.
Lanzerotti does not ask O'Keefe to reverse his course immediately. Instead he recommends that "NASA should take no actions that would preclude a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope" until it completes detailed risk assessments of both human and robotic servicing. He says Hubble is "probably the most important telescope in history".
Lanzerotti also expresses serious doubts about whether current robotic technology is advanced enough to do the job. He cites a long list of technical issues regarding the control of robotic systems from the ground and performing operations on a spacecraft not designed for robotic repair.
After investigating the technology, he writes, the committee concluded a robotic repair mission would essentially be "an experimental test program" that at the same time is expected to accomplish specific objectives.
In a prepared statement, O'Keefe said "NASA is committed to exploring ways to safely extend the useful scientific life of Hubble", but he gave no indication he would reconsider sending astronauts to fix it.
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