DailyTech - Astronauts Continue Mission to Repair Hubble Space Telescope

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Science Astronauts Continue Mission to Repair Hubble Space Telescope
Michael Barkoviak - May 18, 2009 2:50 PM

15 comment(s) - last by Narcofis.. on May 19 at 8:50 AM

Spacewalks to help repair Hubble wind down

The crew of NASA shuttle Atlantis are currently making much needed repairs and installations aboard the aging Hubble Space Telescope.

During one recent spacewalk, NASA astronauts Andrew Feustel and John Grunsfeld carried out a 6.5 hour mission to install new circuit boards inside Hubble. The aging space telescope was in dire need of new hardware to help control all of its instruments, U.S. space agency spokespeople said over the weekend.

On Sunday, a troublesome bolt temporarily delayed repairs as astronauts were forced to use brute force to dislodge it. A couple of other hitches during the spacewalk forced astronauts to make adjustments and not install new insulation on the space telescope.

NASA serviced the iconic space telescope on four other occasions, and this will be the last one due to the pending retirement of the current space shuttle fleet.

The final spacewalk is currently underway aboard Hubble, and NASA engineers expect it to be able to operate for another five to 10 years before it's officially retired. The telescope will either be allowed to remain in its orbit, or it will be directed towards an ocean on Earth after receiving a push by a robotic spacecraft.

Hubble's successor is scheduled to begin operations in 2014, so NASA only truly hopes to get another five years out of it before astronomers can rely on a new telescope.

Even though all the focus is on Hubble, NASA also is very interested in the numerous small dents located on the outside of the shuttle's external fuel tank. They aren't expected to put the return flight in danger, but flight engineers are taking every detail into consideration due to the shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.

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please no

By GlassHouse69 on 5/18/2009 3:33:43 PM , Rating: 1

From what I gather, the new replacement to the hubble will be less appealing to the human eye and be more purely mathematical in its capacity.

Anyone have more than an "AP" released chunk of info on the replacement to this awesome telescope? I have collected massive amounts of beautiful photography from it over the years.

(please don't point to wikis *vomit*)

RE: please no

By BuckinBottoms on 5/18/2009 4:14:04 PM , Rating: 2

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

James Webb Space Telescope

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RE: please no

By oab on 5/18/2009 5:41:51 PM , Rating: 2

That is an infrared telescope, the Hubble was a visible light telescope, so it is not a direct replacement. It is closest to being a replacement to the Spitzer Space Telescope.

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RE: please no

By BuckinBottoms on 5/18/2009 8:02:50 PM , Rating: 2

No, Spitzer is not the replacement. It is the JWST.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spi...
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer/
Spitzer also uses infrared. Not to mention its 5 years old and having issues at the moment.

quote:
The primary mission of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is coming to end after more than five-and-a-half years of probing the cosmos with its keen infrared eye.

JWST has a mirror system that is infrared-optimized along the lines of Spitzer and Hubble.

It's mirror dwarfs Hubbles at 2.4 m (7 feet) compared to JWST's at 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter.

It's infrared range is complementary to Spitzers at 0.6 to 28 µm to Spitzers 3 to 180 µm.

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RE: please no

By oab on 5/18/2009 8:35:29 PM , Rating: 3

I mean that both the JWST and Spitzer are both infrared (not visible, uv or x-ray), and so JWST is closer to Spitzer than it is to Hubble.

The JWST is more comparable to the Herschel Space Observatory the ESA just launched than to Hubble. They are both infrared helium-cooled telescopes, so was Spitzer.

You are right in calling the JWST the successor to Hubble, at least as far as NASA is concerned. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6645179.stm

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RE: please no

By MozeeToby on 5/18/2009 4:38:48 PM , Rating: 2

I'm sure that there will be plenty of people willing to make pretty pictures out of the new telescopes data. The actual sights might not be in the optical spectrum but that doesn't stop you from presenting them in false color.

It's worth noting that most of the Hubble images you like are probably in false color, with sections of the non-visible spectrum added in to fill in gaps and show the whole picture.

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RE: please no

By oab on 5/18/2009 5:47:38 PM , Rating: 3

Many Hubble images are false or enhansed colour, however they were originally visible-light images, so it is more like colourised black and white film instead of moving the spectrum from infrared to visible.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/...

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RE: please no

By Jedi2155 on 5/18/2009 8:32:21 PM , Rating: 2

Indeed, you can learn so much more about an object by examining a specific wavelength and comparing them with the gray scale images from various other wavelengths.

After doing an internship dealing specifically with data reduction of spectrograph images of Saturn I came to appreciate this point of view that we just miss so much detail when we just see things with what the "visible" spectrum tells us. It is just scientifically far more useful to examine the many other wavelengths of light than just the tiny visible one.

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Error

By MozeeToby on 5/18/2009 4:43:43 PM , Rating: 3

quote:
NASA also is very interested in the numerous small dents located on the outside of the shuttle's external fuel tank.

The small impacts are on the heat shield, not the fuel tank, which was left behind somewhere in the Atlantic.

RE: Error

By AnnihilatorX on 5/18/2009 5:01:54 PM , Rating: 2

IIRC the impact dent are on the heat shield in the vicinity of the internal fuel tank of the shuttle.

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RE: Error

By MozeeToby on 5/18/2009 5:08:50 PM , Rating: 3

Fair enough, if that's the case just change 'External fuel tank' to 'Internal fuel tank'.

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Bring Hubble Back!

By MozeeToby on 5/18/2009 5:18:29 PM , Rating: 3

quote:
The final spacewalk is currently underway aboard Hubble, and NASA engineers expect it to be able to operate for another five to 10 years before it's officially retired. The telescope will either be allowed to remain in its orbit, or it will be directed towards an ocean on Earth after receiving a push by a robotic spacecraft.

I'm still holding out that a private company will be capable of bringing hubble back before it re-enters. If there's a telescope that deserves a place in the Smithsonian, this is it. Hubble has changed the way we look at the universe and has in many cases opened people's eyes to both astronomy and the space program. It's a shame that we're just going to let it burn up on re-entry.

RE: Bring Hubble Back!

By oab on 5/18/2009 5:39:46 PM , Rating: 2

Well, it is very dangerous to go and recover it (the shuttle is currently the only vehicle that can fetch it), it cannot be repaired ... there are no more spare parts.

You can be sure that a replica will be made for one of the space museums, but how many people are willing to have the government spend several hundred million dollars for a museum piece?

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