The Hubble is in Trouble

by Edith T. Carper

The powerful Hubble Space Telescope is under scrutiny from the ground below — its present, its future and possibly even its replacement. As it stands, unless scientists repair its batteries and gyroscopes, the Hubble will most likely “become inoperable” by 2008.

Since 1990, astronauts have been servicing the Hubble by replacing gyroscopes and electronic boxes, installing new science instruments, and using the shuttle’s propulsion system to give the telescope an orbit altitude boost.

The Hubble bad news cycle began last January when NASA’s administrator Sean O’Keefe announced that safety concerns forced the cancellation of a planned shuttle mission to service Hubble. But a 25 August New York Times editorial guessed that a “deeper reason” might be “a desire to commit all shuttle flights to completing the space station so that the shuttle could be retired, freeing up funds for President Bush’s plan to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.”

The editorial went on to say that the Hubble’s planned abandonment resulted in “a justifiable outcry from the scientific community and in Congress.” In July, the National Academy of Sciences had urged NASA to do nothing that would preclude a servicing mission by astronauts, “in case it proves unfeasible for a robot to do the job.”

Hubble’s Eye Still Within Reach

According to the Smithsonian Association, the Hubble is the most sophisticated instrument ever devised for eyeing the farthest reaches of the universe.” Astronomers have used it to obtain images of celestial objects and phenomena in detail “never before observed,” according to space sources. Findings include “pictures of stars surrounded by dusty disks that might someday evolve into planetary systems, images of galaxies on the edge of the observable universe, pictures of galaxies colliding and tearing each other apart, and evidence suggesting that most galaxies have massive black holes in their centers.”

According to the Smithsonian, “the biggest surprise is that the universe is not just expanding, but expanding faster and faster, propelled by a mysterious force called dark energy,” which makes up more than 70 percent of the stuff in the universe.” Mario Livio, the Hubble’s senior astronomer, says that if the Hubble “were to die tomorrow, the entire search would be suspended.”

Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will not be launched until 2011. If the Hubble becomes inoperable by 2008, scientists would have to deal with a three-year gap in collecting critical images and data. In addition, since the Webb telescope will be “situated about a million miles from earth in an orbit around the sun, repairs and upgrades will be “virtually impossible.” Hubble is still within reach of space missions. As Today's Engineer went to press, O'Keefe had agreed to a robotic Hubble maintenance mission, and promised to ask Congress funding. (www.iht.com/articles/535727.htm)

IEEE-USA Supports Servicing Missions

In August, IEEE-USA sent a letter to House and Senate leaders and NASA officials that “strongly supports” NASA’s decision to send a “servicing mission” to the Hubble for maintenance work and to replace present instruments with two new ones: the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.”

In the letter, IEEE-USA President John Steadman commended  NASA “for its commitment to extending the working life of the Hubble Space Telescope.” Further, he said that IEEE-USA is encouraged "that concerns of the scientific and engineering communities have been heard on this matter.”

 

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Edith T. Carper is a special correspondent to IEEE-USA Today's Engineer and can be reached at todaysengineer@ieee.org. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's.