Bush Moon Mission Sounds Death Knell for Hubble

The people on the science side at NASA are playing a little hard ball. The message is,... so you want to spend billions to go to the moon/mars? well this is what it is going to cost.

No one that I know that is connected with space exploration and I do not know any on the maned space flight side, thinks Bush's proposal is a good idea. They think it is a very bad, if not foolish, idea.

The man to moon/mars proposal addresses two constituencies, engineers and the macho/romantic si-fi types.

Oh, geez, fallout already.

Hubble DOES stuff. NOW. Great stuff, useful stuff.

Ack.

Interesting take on it, Acquiunk. I hope that if that is a message they're trying to send, that the message will be received.

Thanks BBB. Damn! Agreed, re: Aqualink, Sozobe.

Next Generation Space Telescope
What is worrisome is that there has been no mention of continuing to fund the Hubble replacement already underway. ---BBB

Thursday, 8 March 2001
NGST - Next Generation Space Telescope

Astronomers refer to it as the dark period: the time not long after the Big Bang when the first galaxies started to form. Dark, because they know very little about this key stage in our universe's development. They don't even know, for example, just how the galaxies formed.

They're hoping to answer this key question, and many others, with a new space telescope - the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST). As the Hubble Space Telescope's successor, it will be able to peer even further into space and look further back in time.

The design is currently being coordinated from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and we go there to take a look at progress so far. (full transcript...)

Full Program Transcript

Narration: In the beginning there was the big bang…then the galaxies formed…then the stars and planets…and eventually you and me. It's the textbook-standard theory…just …don't ask about the details.

John Mather VO: "No! We don't know how galaxies form."
"You'd be surprised how much we don't know about the beginning of the universe."

Narration: The relatively recent universe - the time after galaxies were born - makes up most of our knowledge…and the space telescope, Hubble, has given us a remarkable amount of it.

John Mather: Hubble has been astonishingly important. Several percent of all the papers in astronomy ever published are based on the Hubble discoveries. And it's the most productive observatory we've ever had."

Narration: The observatory overhead takes images free of the atmosphere's distortion…and it's given us incredibly detailed views of some of the most beautiful objects in our skies. But Hubble can't look way back in time because it detects visible light. To see galaxies being born astronomers need infrared sight.

John Mather: "Because the universe expands, the wavelengths of light from distant objects are red-shifted - they are made much longer - so we need infrared detectors in order to see those first objects."

Narration: A telescope that peers into the infrared is now on NASA's drawing board. It's the next generation of space telescope - to replace Hubble …it's called Next Generation Space Telescope - NGST. The promise is it will be even bigger and better than Hubble.

John Mather: Oh it's huge. The mirror we want to put up is 8 meters across - about 26 feet. So it's 3 times as big as the Hubble mirror and it's almost as big as the biggest ones we have on the ground."

Narration: It's so big, the mirror will have to be launched in several pieces.

John Mather: This mirror is bigger than the rocket. So this has got to be deployed and unfolded and adjusted to perfection after it gets there."

Narration: Working out just how to adjust the mirror to perfection is the tricky part, and that's where NASA's labs in Greenbelt Maryland come in. In these buildings, complex computer programmes are being developed that will co-ordinate the realignment of the sections of the mirror. Precision is the key - if any section is out by a just a few nanometres the NGST's images will blur.

This is where the realignment methods are worked out. On this test-bed, tiny scaled-down mirror sections are twisted and turned. If the researchers can adjust these small pieces to perfection, they can scale-up the process for NGST. The complicated geometrical puzzle is solved upstairs. It's the computer's task to work out how to tweak the mirrors so the blurred image becomes sharp.

Actuality: It's pretty distorted when we see it and then we'll correct it back in.
Actuality: Aha. Much better it's got a little halo around it but a nice square shot there with a little dark zone

Narration: Getting a nice square shot is vital this time round given Hubble's early problems. The conclusion that we've come to is that there's a significant sperical aberration that is present in the optics. A very aggressive set of movements were made that should improve the image but it did not. Did not. The space shuttle saved Hubble, because astronauts could repair the faulty optics. But NGST will be thousands of times further away.

John Mather: A telescope a million miles from Earth cannot be repaired. Not with current technology anyway. So we have to get it right the first time. Which is the way we always used to do it before we had a shuttle to take an astronaut up to do some servicing. But it's still a tricky matter. Another tricky matter is designing a giant sunshield for NGST. Because the telescope looks for faint wisps of infrared light - in other words heat - it needs a shield the size of a tennis court to protect it from the sun's overwhelming heat.

John Mather: We need to keep this telescope cool because otherwise it will glow and emit light at the wavelengths we're trying to measure. So it'd be like trying to observe with a telescope made of fluorescent light bulbs."

Narration: By shaking the one-to-ten scale model, the researchers can work out how it might behave when orbiting in space.

Actuality: It's just in the acquisition mode going through and acquiring the data at each of the points the laser is scanning through on…. Now we go into the analysis window and bring up the data. looks like a good data set

Narration: If NASA get things right, the strange objects in the early universe might be revealed. From the highly exotic - black holes left over from the big bang - to the more-close-to-home - suns and planets actually being born.

John Mather: re's a chance to see the process really happening and to see planets orbiting in their primordial clouds around their primordial stars.

Narration: NGST's first look at galaxies being born won't be until 2009. But NASA's deciding the design of the telescope in the next few months.

Thanks, Hub.

2010 or thereabouts was ALWAYS going to be the end of Hubble. The reason always was AND STILL IS that the space shuttle would not be around to service it. Bush's plan didn't create that situation. The age of the shuttles, the workload added by the international spacestation and the fact that one exploded recently have created it. I don't like Dubbya in the slightest but you can't blame EVERYTHING on him.

Acquiunk, what have you got against engineers?

I second one thing Adrian mentioned.

Hubble was sceduled to end its usefullness in 2010 -- and chances are that extending its life beyond that would have cost much more than the expected value to be obtained.

While I understand many of the concerns people have with plowing money into manned space exploration -- this particular argument is really just a red herring.

In any case, I'm for manned exploration -- but I don't think this supposed initiative by Bush is anything but election year bullshit!

Not really... 2010 is a long ways away. Hubble is consistently doing really great things. It may last a while longer -- or it may die in a year. The loss of 5 years of data from Hubble would be significant.

What I have been trying to find, and haven't definitively yet, is what is up with the replacement, called the James Webb Space Telescope. It wasn't so much that Hubble was going to be dead in 2010 as that that was when the replacement was to be ready. E.G. says it is fine "...for now." (added in an onimous tone.)

Looks like good news for Hubble, at least for the short-term....

http://internationalreporter.net/scripts/linesDetails.asp?id=237

Littlek
Littlek, wonderful news.

I wish, when Hubble is ready to retire, that instead of dumping it in the oceans, it could be retrieved and displayed in the D.C. Space museum.

BBB

Hopefully! Needs to be approved, tho...

BBB - I like that idea.

Soz, I think with the resounding cry of angst at the thought of it being trashed will help get the funding passed.

So you like what he did, but attribute it to base motives. Did you know that he has increased NASA's budget every year that he's been in office?

Why do we need to go to Mars, or even the Moon? Perhaps we could feed, clothe & shelter the starving millions around the world first, then play explorers afterwards?

Having said that, it's not really any of my business how the American public allow their governments to spend their tax dollars, so forget I was ever bothered.

If Spain, or Queen Isabella, had refrained from financing Columbus's voyage until poverty was eliminated there, we would still be waiting. It is said that the birthplace of mankind was Sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps some cave dwelling ancestor of ours in that original cradle of our species, upon suggesting that they see what was over a nearby hill, was told that his time and attention would be better spent attempting to gather more berries to feed their people. However, in retrospect, the migration of mankind from its birthplace in Africa to utilize the rest of the planet was rather productive.

It is not as though space exploration and fighting poverty are the only two programs in the budget and what goes to one must necessarily come from the other. I believe that your own country played a very active role in helping to explore this world. In a cosmos filled with trillions of stars, and presumably worlds, many of us feel it would be odd to stay here in our cradle forever.

I agree with you completely, Brandon, that space needs to be explored. The planet's resources will run out at some time and at the very least we need to explore space to find new places to get them from. Asteroids pulled into orbit maybe? Who knows?

My conscience just gave me a kick when I estimated how much money it will cost to send people to Mars.

o i c

Despite my status as an Enthusiast, I am ignorant of the expression 'o i c', unless of course it means 'oh I see' in which case I am not...!

That is what it means. It is fairly common chatroom slang.