NASA budget would kill Hubble(in future)

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/02/07/budget.nasa.ap/index.html

Quote[/b] ]CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- With the moon on its horizon, NASA sees a slight increase in the budget proposed by President Bush on Monday, but it's not enough to save the Hubble Space Telescope.

Only $93 million in the space agency's $16.45 billion budget would go toward Hubble's survival: $75 million to develop a kamikaze robot that would steer the orbiting observatory into the ocean at the end of its lifetime, and $18 million to try to eke out as much scientific observing time as possible from the telescope through clever remote controlling.

No money is in the budget to send either a robotic repairman or shuttle astronauts to Hubble to extend its lifetime, a decision that is sure to anger astronomers and members of Congress.

Late last year, a National Academy of Sciences panel recommended one final visit to Hubble by astronauts.

Although it's just a telescope, it enabled us earthlings to see far beyond what we were able to. Now that budget is getting smaller, I see some don't see it that way.

[denoir 0]

They are really talented when it comes to making bad PR decisions. The Hubble is well-known to people. It seems that NASA still doesn't get the simple relation:

People like space --> Politicians like space ---> NASA gets a ton of money.

Another sad part of the story is that if asked nicely, the Russians would be more than willing to do it. They've been doing automatic docking for decades. But no; When the Russians offered their help, NASA declined and said that it would do it on its own.

[korax 4]

What goes up, must come down!

Yeah, the Hubble was awesome, but this just means they will want to put up a bigger, more powerful, colour telescope.

[denoir 0]

That's just it - there are no plans for a Hubble replacement at all. They will in a few years put up a radio telescope, but that is completely different from the optical Hubble.

[D34N 0]

Quote[/b] ]Although it's just a telescope, it enabled us earthlings to see far beyond what we were able to. Now that budget is getting smaller, I see some don't see it that way.

Huh?

1. Funding will steadily increase over the years

Link.

2. James Webb Space Telescope

More Linkage.

We will be a couple of years without the Hubble, but soon after we land on the moon again (ETA 2020) the James Webb will be on its way out. Lets hope that it doesn't breakdown, since it will be in the placed into a Lagrangrian L2 orbit. (1.5 million km from Earth)

[AdmiralKarlDonuts 0]

According to the Associated Press this morning, there was no money allotted in the proposed 2006 budget for Hubble. There had been plans for some upgrades, but apparantly they're just going to let it die.

The story was on the news wires this morning, looking for it now.

*EDIT*

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/politics/08nasa.html

and

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=479078

[ozanzac 0]

What was the projected operational lifespan of Hubble? Has the telescope yet outlived it?

[D34N 0]

Its in year 14 of 15, But:

Quote[/b] ]"Hubble could easily live well beyond 20 years, and furthermore, the National Academy committee stated that the future discoveries from Hubble over the next five years are every bit as bright as the discoveries we've seen in the past," Beckwith said.

Link.

[FireflyPL 0]

Space is really extreme enviroment and all equipment there works at extreme conditions thus costs of mainteinance rise very quickly. Hubble is now one of the oldest piece of hardware there so it cant live forever and because of so high costs it has to be scrapped. Even though it has done tremendous job in last decade, todays technology is far greater and there is no need to keep it on orbit with rising mainteinance costs. So, we have to say goodbye to Hubble just like we did to Mir space station.

[iNeo 0]

awesome

Sweet flash movie, gonna save that one Thanks.

[Ex-RoNiN 0]

I am a lot more annoyed about the cancellation of Prometheus. We definitely need new propulsion systems, and Prometheus looked very promising indeed.

[EiZei 0]

Did prometheus get cancelled for budget reasons or was it more like "NUCLEAR OMG OMG WE DIE"?

(assuming that I remember correctly and prometheus was about nuclear propulsion.. )

[shinRaiden 0]

Just the usual NIMBY "no nukes" stuff. It's a shame, since there's been plenty of research done on nuclear and ion drives going back decades, but again politics - from the other side of the aisle - is killing that off.

Article somewhere through slashdot I think said that Hubble was intended to be shuttle-maintanenced every few years, like it was specifically rigged to require the most complicated support possible. It's not like they don't know how to make them resiliant, aren't MISTY and the KH birds still up after how many years? Yeah Intelstar lost a couple biggies over the last couple months, but that's the exception not the rule.

[Colossus 2]

Quote[/b] ]$75 million to develop a kamikaze robot that would steer the orbiting observatory into the ocean at the end of its lifetime

Yes! Lets use $75 million to crash it, that way we can save money.

Sure..

Why not shut it down and leave it there. There already a few dead satellites up there from before, and gravity will take care of it after a while (I think..)

Or maybe Mr. Bush can give them a bit more money instead of useing all of the economy on war.

[DarkLight 0]

awesome

Sweet flash movie, gonna save that one Thanks.

Yeah it's beautiful...

I love stuff like that shows that the universe still is full of mysteries. And that there's more to it than just some stars and planets

I think it's impressing... pictures like that really make me think for a while...

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Quote[/b] ]With the moon on its horizon, NASA sees a slight increase in the budget proposed by President Bush on Monday

how are they constantly able to increase every goddamn budget? in my country every important budget is constantly being shortened!

[Acecombat 0]

Quote[/b] ]$75 million to develop a kamikaze robot that would steer the orbiting observatory into the ocean at the end of its lifetime

Yes! Lets use $75 million to crash it, that way we can save money.

Sure..

Why not shut it down and leave it there. There already a few dead satellites up there from before, and gravity will take care of it after a while (I think..)

Or maybe Mr. Bush can give them a bit more money instead of useing all of the economy on war.

What happens if they leave it up there? Will it fall down by the pull of earths gravity itself slowly or simply stay there?

I guess if it slowly falls down itself , its better if they pilot it down to a safe designated spot rather then let it tumble down on a populated area without warning

[denoir 0]

Quote[/b] ]

Quote[/b] ]With the moon on its horizon, NASA sees a slight increase in the budget proposed by President Bush on Monday

how are they constantly able to increase every goddamn budget? in my country every important budget is constantly being shortened!

The largest deficit in the world history?   Simply put, he spends more money than he has.

Anyway, the ESA budget is being significantly increased every year. And that's not counting the Galileo project which has been overfunded by several factors!

[Colossus 2]

Quote[/b] ]$75 million to develop a kamikaze robot that would steer the orbiting observatory into the ocean at the end of its lifetime

Yes! Lets use $75 million to crash it, that way we can save money.

Sure..

Why not shut it down and leave it there. There already a few dead satellites up there from before, and gravity will take care of it after a while (I think..)

Or maybe Mr. Bush can give them a bit more money instead of useing all of the economy on war.

What happens if they leave it up there? Will it fall down by the pull of earths gravity itself slowly or simply stay there?

I guess if it slowly falls down itself , its better if they pilot it down to a safe designated spot rather then let it tumble down on a populated area without warning  

The regulary have small engines to get them in posision, right?

At a normal satellite they use those engines to guied them down.

But as in defence I did say "I think", so if I was wrong you have just proven that.

Sorry if I was wrong then.

[PainDealer 0]

it's simply wrong to destroy hubble it's a living legend

[theavonlady 2]

Out with the old and in with the new.

Maybe.

Quote[/b] ]Replacing Hubble

Instruments destined for the venerable space telescope could form the basis for its replacement.

Francis Reddy

Sporting a lightweight mirror, grounded instruments and spare parts from the Hubble Space Telescope, and a new wide-field imager, the Hubble Origins Probe could deliver Hubble science into the next decade. JHU

February 3, 2005

The Hubble Space Telescope, it seems, just can't catch a break. Sooner or later, aging batteries and failing gyroscopes will put a stop to the tremendous flow of science from Hubble, which astronomers have lauded as the most productive telescope since Galileo's.

NASA canceled the final shuttle servicing mission last year, citing safety considerations following the Columbia tragedy in 2003. Then, the space agency became intrigued by the possibility of repairing Hubble with a robot. Both a National Research Council panel and the world's largest group of astronomers back servicing the telescope by some means — preferably with the shuttle. But sources in the White House have indicated that NASA's 2006 budget, to be unveiled next week, will not include the estimated $1.5 billion for either repair option.

Now, an international team led by Johns Hopkins University astronomers suggests an alternative: create a new space telescope, called the Hubble Origins Probe (HOP), that would carry instruments built for the canceled servicing mission. "Though we support any option that will maintain the Hubble mission, the Hubble Origins Probe is the best choice not only for continuing that tradition of discovery, but also for taking it one step further," said Colin Norman, one of the team leaders, in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science yesterday.

HOP would replicate design of the original Hubble but use a much lighter mirror and a modern spacecraft. The new mirror would not contain Hubble's mission-threatening optical flaw, which astronauts fixed in 1993 during the telescope's first servicing mission by installing "contact lenses." HOP would include two instruments destined for Hubble that have been built already — the Cosmic Origins Spectrograh (COS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

HOP can be developed quickly at significant savings and low risk, according to Norman, by replicating a successful design and using existing instruments. The spacecraft bus, which provides power, data handling, pointing control, and communications, is based on the Spitzer Space Telescope's. One of HOP's fine guidance sensors, which are crucial for tracking cosmic targets, will come from Hubble's own spare parts, but two others will be designed using modern technology.

The new spacecraft will sport a "deorbit module," a rocket motor that will allow the telescope's safe entry into the atmosphere at the end of its working life. Hubble lacks such a rocket, and some future spacecraft must attach one after the spacecraft dies.

"In the context of the astronomical roadmap, our goal with HOP is to first repair the bridge broken by the Columbia tragedy, and then drive over that bridge and explore current territory planned on the roadmap for Hubble science," Norman said. Plans call for the new telescope to be launched on an Atlas 521 rocket into low Earth orbit in 2010.

A new camera, dubbed the Very Wide Field Imager (VWFI), would be built in collaboration with Japanese partners, who would underwrite the cost. Saku Tsuneta of Japan's National Astronomical Observatory leads the development team.

"The scientific enhancement of the mission comes from the fact that the field of view of the VWFI is 17 times that of the Advanced Camera currently flying on Hubble, and the VWFI is 3 to 4 times more sensitive at critical wavelengths," explained Norman. "We will use this powerful new capability to detect thousands of transits by planets … opening an exciting era of planetary demographics, survey for hundreds of … type Ia supernovae to investigate the nature of dark energy, and to … measure the large-scale distribution of dark matter."

The telescope's design could host one additional instrument, possibly a spectrograph contributed by European and Australian partners.

"HOP can address three of the most central intellectual issues of our age: the nature of dark energy, the nature and distribution of dark matter, and the prevalance of planets, including Earths, around other stars," Norman said.

"The decision before us is obvious. We must continue with the Hubble adventure to explore these great questions further, to understand more fully our remarkable universe and our place in it. We must do this with intense determination and energy, and thus continue to inspire new generations with the wonder and thrill of exploration and discovery," he concluded.

[denoir 0]

Ah yes, the Johns Hopkins University is suggesting it. Good thing they have resources to design, build and put it into orbit. I always suspect they were hiding heavy lift boosters on the campus grounds.

Rubbish. What some scientists at a university day dream about has little to do with reality. The sad fact is that with the large space agencies the story is always the same, if it hasn't been planned since 1975, it won't happen in the next 30 years.

[Monkey Lib Front 10]

I am a lot more annoyed about the cancellation of Prometheus. We definitely need new propulsion systems, and Prometheus looked very promising indeed.

From what i have hear it has not been cancelled.

[theavonlady 2]

OT.

We lost one!

Quote[/b] ]Outcast Star Zooms Out of Milky Way Galaxy

Tue Feb 8, 4:51 PM ET   Science - Reuters

By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An outcast star is zooming out of the Milky Way, the first ever seen escaping the galaxy, astronomers reported on Tuesday.

The star is heading for the emptiness of intergalactic space after being ejected from the heart of the Milky Way following a close encounter with a black hole, said Warren Brown, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The outcast is going so fast -- over 1.5 million mph -- that astronomers believe it was lobbed out of the galaxy by the tremendous force of a black hole thought to sit at the Milky Way's center. That speed is about twice the velocity needed to escape the galaxy's grip, Brown said by telephone.

"We have never before seen a star moving fast enough to completely escape the confines of our galaxy," he said. "We're tempted to call it the outcast star because it was forcefully tossed from its home."

The star used to be part of a binary pair, waltzing with its companion star close to the rim of the black hole. In this case, "close" is a relative term; the actual distance was probably about 50 times the 93 million-mile distance between Earth and the sun.

As the two stars twirled around each other, they were pulled faster and faster toward the edge of the black hole, one of those monster drains in space whose gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape once it is consumed.

While the companion star was captured by the black hole, the outcast continued on its whirling path around its edge.

Objects go faster the closer they get to black holes and this star was probably moving at extraordinary speed, perhaps as high as 20 million mph. That very speed, coupled with the speed of its twirling, sent the outcast zooming toward the edge of the Milky Way and beyond.

At this point, the outcast is about 180,000 light-years from Earth, in an outer region of the galaxy known as the halo. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.

More information and images are available at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/pr0505image.html.

[killagee 0]

Thats incredible! I love this universe. Just more reason for ESA, Nasa and russia to get together and build a bigger, better and modular hubble with line-replacable units to extend its life to 50 odd years...