This type of reporting ticked me off to no end and I'm glad someone in the media was as offended by it as I was. The initial problems with Hubble were seized upon as an example of government boondoggle and incompetence. Even after Hubble was fixed, the people who were reporting on it never seemed to update their opinion or information. Each article had to have the obligatory paragraph of Hubble's travails wasting valuable column space reporting old news instead of telling the story of what Hubble was discovering about our universe.

I've felt this way too. I see how many mistakes are made in reporting about subjects I know about that I have to conclude that just as many mistakes are being made in subjects in which I'm not as versed. What upsets me the most is that many of these errors are in basic facts. Do fact checkers and editors not exist anymore?

Thanks for the great post. I'm looking forward to reading your work.

Old post, but I just calculated this for another thread. It takes about 3 km/sec delta V to shift Hubble to ISS; using NTO/UDMH that's about 11.5 * 1.7 = 20 tons of fuel, plus a bit for the booster. A DS-1-type ion engine would require perhaps 1.5 tons of fuel, plus a bit more for the solar panels and such. I don't know how either would be attached; the chemical thruster would presumably need to be quite low thrust in order not to damage the scope. The DS-1 ion engine has an output thrust of 92 mN, which translates into perhaps .5 meters/sec/day--it would take 6000 days to complete the plane shift, which doesn't appear particularly helpful. 10 engines would reduce the time to a couple of years, and would require perhaps 25 kW of electricity.

Why??? It survived a shuttle ride up there!

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Yes - but in a stowed configuration and packed to withstand the stresses, and that was a decade ago or more.

That's well within the capabilities of an Ariane or Delta launch vehicle.

I'm not sure I like that idea, since it presumably means that Hubble is unusable for the duration.

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Phil, I just e-mailed your response to DJ to my friend, on whose behalf I had posted a poll in this forum. I should have just asked for your opinion. You have pretty much echoed what he told me, as far as the value of the Hubble. He just wondered if the general public felt the way he did.

Yes, with a caveat or two. The problem is not so much getting it up there, but doing the unmanned rendezvous and docking. It'd need a circa 1000 newton (maybe closer to 100--it depends on how much acceleration Hubble could stand) motor that could burn continuously for perhaps up to a week, while it balances the whole ungainly mass. I suspect that the autodock would be the most technically challenging part.
Agreed. Taking a few months off for the transition might be ok.

US astronaut Michael Fincke said that he was ready to return to orbit with his Russian colleagues but their was also some talk of Hubble. Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Gennadi Padalka spent six months on the ISS. "Not everything in space is simple," Padalka said, in response to a question about the decision of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration to rely more on robots for space exploration. "We have a flexibility that the machines do not have," he added. He expressed skepticism over NASA plans to repair the Hubble Space Telescope using only robots. Russian craft have been the only means of getting to the space station and back since the United States grounded its shuttle fleet following the loss of the Columbia, Padalka doesn't seem to think are current robots will answer Hubbles problems

It was hard for me to decide what topic to post this update in, I hope it's appropriate. NPR did a story this morning about a new report out on the fate of Hubble.

Report Discourages NASA Plan to Save Hubble

NASA asked the Aerospace Corporation (AC) to do an independent study weigh options for future of Hubble. It is a confidential document, but an Executive Summary is available. AC concluded a robotic servicing mission is high-risk, and it would take too long--5 years to develop, and Hubble. But someone (the Senior Project Scientist, I didn't catch his name) from Goddard countered that the AC study didn't take into account that the robot is already developed and flight-qualified ISS, so that cuts down on time. The study also recommends that Hubble be brought down and the two instruments waiting to go up should be put on a new, bare-bones telescope. The study says that a human servicing mission is medium-risk, and the only option guaranteed to reach Hubble before it dies.
The story also included a clip of Sean O'Keefe saying that a human servicing mission is still absolutely not an option.
Another report by National Academy of Sciences is due out this week.
The story didn't give any timeline for when a decision will be made.

One thing that quietly slipped by in a NASA news release in mid-summer was that the Hubble Origins Probe has been selected for further study. I have to say that, as I look at the alternatives, this seems clearly the most cost-effective approach to the decline in Hubble's usability. The idea is to take the two new instruments - COS and WFC3 - and launch them on a new basic 2.4m telescope. (You'd probably want to aberrate the optics just like Hubble's, in fact, to keep instrument changes to a minimum). A number of studies have said that such a thing could have been done before for around $250 million, since we've learned a lot since Hubble's design was set around 1980. Even if that means $500 million, it beats the robotic alternative. I have no doubt that various offices within NASA (and the USAF) would really like to see $2 billion invested (by someone else) in space-qualified robotics, but it don't seem right to implicitly charge that to the Hubble program if the major interest is long-term. Again, robots in space could be a very powerful thing, but don't make it look as if all the money is being spent just to service HST.

I gather that HOP is a genuine and hard-working project, an impression that was reinforced when I went looking for graphics to spice up a talk at a con and found that the principal investigator had no power-point graphics! Aside from a nomination for sainthood, that may mean that everyone there is actually working the engineering.

National Academy of Sciences says (recommends) NO to robotic mission, YES to human shuttle mission for servicing Hubble.

One of their major problems with robotic servicing arises from the estimated complexity of the mission. Looking at the diagram here:
http://books.nap.edu/books/030909530...5.html#pagetop shows that no NASA mission of even the compexity of the deorbit module alone, let alone the actual robotic work, has been successfully executed on a timeframe as short as the 39 months that they imposed. (The deadline comes from estimates of how long HST would retain enough functionality not to be a hostile docking target, and not to have had major systems dead so long that reactivation would propbably not restore useful function.) I'm rather less optimistic about the robotic option now.

January 5, 2005
"...MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd said Wednesday it has signed a $154 million deal to help NASA's controversial repair mission to fix the aging Hubble Space Telescope...will supply "potential information and robotic servicing solutions" for the Hubble repair mission..."

I'll go up there and fix it for free. I just need a ride. And a manual.

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Oh good, now all NASA has to do is convert that to kinetic information.

Thanks. I needed a laugh today.

Don't know if it made your news in the US but MD has already sucessfully demonstrated the capability to remote repair with a robot operating on the Hubble mockup. That is what changed NASA's mind on this. MD some time ago accquired SPAR Aerospace, the company that originally designed the arm. They have been developing far more sophisticated robotics since.

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Does this mean NASA continues to go to pot due to its own inertia? Or is it all downhill from here?

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AAS: astronauts not robots should fix Hubble

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so its going to be fixed ?

Depends on whether Congress decides to fund it or not.

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This is an interesting proposal. Instead of repairing Hubble, build a new telescope using the replacement & new parts that are sitting unused on the ground.

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Also brought up here.

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Hooray, let's do that! No risks to astronauts, no "wasted" shuttle flight, and heck, it'll probably be cheaper. What are the downsides? Time to build... and if the new contraption's pretty big it'll need a heavy booster.

The Hubble Origins Probe is an interesting idea, but it is not a solution IMO. It will cost around 2 billion dollars (more than a servicing mission to HST) and certainly cannot launch for five or more years, meaning several years after Hubble will have failed.

Will it? The article says it will cost one billion dollars (which is also the cost of JWST). Estimates for a robotic servicing mission for HST are on the order of two billion dollars (though I still say that if they're going to repair Hubble, they should stick with astronauts).

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What options are being seriously considered?

If a booster is planned to "deep six" it, how serious are they looking at a booster which would lower and stabilize it instead?

Can not a booster incorporate gyros and batteries to take control and extend the life of Hubble's power?

Is the Shuttle physically capable of returning the Hubble to us someday (assuming delta V issues resolved)?

Can the Shuttle launch with spare fuel in it's payload for the delta V issues?

I just feel the Hubble is too much a part of mankind's step into our universe to see millions spent to flame it into an ocean. It is hard for our minds to connect to the abyss we now find ourselfs. Thanks to Hubble, this abyss has been made beautiful. Seeing and touching Hubble someday by us and, more importantly, our children is vital in advancing our commitiment to this great and ultimate frontier.

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One of the problems (aside from failing components) is that it is already getting too low and atmospheric drag is bringing it lower. Any lower and it will quickly (and uncontrollably) fall to Earth - the very thing that we are trying to avoid!

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That is under consideration as part of the robotic servicing mission.

The shuttle could do this now, but it's not going to happen. (If NASA isn't willing to risk astronauts' lives on servicing Hubble, they're certainly not going to do so just to bring Hubble down to be put in the Smithsonian.)

That would be tricky, to say the least, and isn't going to happen in the present safety-conscious environment.

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My hope was they could make the booster capable of controlling the Hubble. Equip it with gyros, batteries, etc., then shut-off the Hubble's power draining and, eventually, unreliable gyros/brakes. This would, I think, extend the battery life on-board the Hubble. It could stay in it's orbit, I suppose.

If there is a way to return it, the booster would bring it to a rendevouz point. Maybe a second "piggy-back" booster would be required for the delta V issue.

I am really just fishing for answers to plans such as this so I can get a better feel of what hope there may, or may not, be for the Hubble.

Early on, your idea stuck with me - if they are going to spend money on a booster to kill it, why not make one to save it (paraphrased ).

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