Hubble Slated To Be De-Orbited

7 Feb, 2005 at 11:56pm ET Article published in Tech

It’s curtains for the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s new budget says.

The famous but troubled camera is heading for a “robotic de-orbit mission,” the space agency said Monday in its budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

That means the Hubble, which hovers about 600 kilometres above the Earth and circles it every 95 minutes, will be guided into the ocean once it has worn out. “The timing and content of the de-orbit mission will be a result of activities conducted in 2005,” NASA said.

Hubble is “a spacecraft that is dying,” NASA comptroller Steve Isakowitz said.

But it wasn’t the $1 billion US to $2 billion US cost of the repairs needed to keep the telescope sending information to back Earth that led to the decision. Rather, the risks of fixing it are too high, he said.

Launched in 1990, Hubble is only a year away from its original lifespan of 15 years.

Source: CBC

Comments

8 Feb 2005 ~ 12:44am muddocktor I just love the way NASA is just abandoning the Hubble, the bastards! Hell, the astronauts have known from day 1 that there's a chance something will screw up and cause their deaths. But NASA can waste billions on that damn space station and they astronauts will be taking the same risks with the shuttle.

NASA has just lost a long-time supporter in me. I say, just cut their budget to the bone.
8 Feb 2005 ~ 8:53am celcho maybe they'll just replace the hubble with something way better for a few billion more rather than spending 2 billion or whatever to fix old technology.
8 Feb 2005 ~ 9:35am Sputnik that's the talk that's been going around celcho. The current head of NASA is a manager, thru and thru, not like the old heads who were scientist/researcher first and manager second. Additionally, Bush has been throwing his weight and forcing them to do a ton of crap that jsut isn't doable on the miniscule budget that they already have. He's trying to be like kennedy was back in the 60s, but with spending any money. Or not being evil.
8 Feb 2005 ~ 2:34pm RADA

celcho wrote:

maybe they'll just replace the hubble with something way better for a few billion more rather than spending 2 billion or whatever to fix old technology.

Agree,

It's 15 yrs old! Would you keep upgrading a PIII or just buy a new machine?

NASA already has plans for a new, more powerful space-borne telescope.
8 Feb 2005 ~ 5:40pm RWB I know I have seen shows that talked about plans of several telescopes working together to form one gigantic telescope capable of peering through a stars aura and seeing actual planets. That would be cool
8 Feb 2005 ~ 8:02pm Jolyon33 Yeah, but thats how many years (or decades) before they get it done? I would definitely keep upgrading my PIII telescope if my P4 wasn't gonna be ready before retirement!!!
8 Feb 2005 ~ 11:38pm qparadox While adaptive optics is a promising field, the people who quote insane resolution numbers for large earth-based AO telescopes are mostly looking at the absolute best case. No matter what, there's still significant atmospheric absorption and the problem of ummm this thing called weather that happens on planets. The "replacement" for Hubble is actually a totally different type of telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is designed to work primarily in the infrared spectrum whereas the Hubble was primarily visible light. So while the JWST will have far higher resolution that hubble, it will be taking an entirely different image. Ideally, astronomers would like Space Telescopes for as many regions of the spectrum as possible (due to chromatic abberation and other wavelength dependent effects its very difficult to image multiple parts of the spectrum with one instrument).

What concerns me the most about losing Hubble is that if, in the mounds of unanalyzed data, scientists find something very interersting that needs to be analyzed with more precision, but by the time they find it there's no ST that can view the right spectrum to actually make the observations. I'd love to a real Hubble replacement, but the reality is more countries than the US need to be contributing to such an effort.
9 Feb 2005 ~ 6:02am EQuito

Rather, the risks of fixing it are too high, he said.

What risks? they've done it before...
9 Feb 2005 ~ 10:13am primesuspect The risk of sending a manned mission up there again, "merely" to repair Hubble - they're still reeling from Columbia.
9 Feb 2005 ~ 11:50am Brilt Well as I remember it NASA had plans to begin building, or designing I forget which, of a new telescope one that would have been 16 times better then Hubble. They were talking about it in 2001 but since 9/11 slashed their budget their caviar dreams and bologna sandwich budget made that a no go. So maybe now that plan might go into action, especially if we no longer will have the Hubble