I figured I should be careful about saying the HST is down. Someone might think that meant it's no longer in orbit. It's still in orbit, it's just not working. Think of it like one of those phone recordings you get: "the telescope you've reached is not in service at this time. Try again in a few months."
NASA announced Nov. 29 that Hubble was in a safe mode because of a problem with one of its three operational gyroscopes. That gyro first triggered a safe mode Nov. 19 when it provided what NASA described as faulty readings. Spacecraft controllers restored operations of Hubble, only to see problems again Nov. 21 and 23.
Hubble has six gyroscopes, installed on the the fifth and final shuttle servicing mission in 2009. Three of the six have since malfunctioned. Program engineers are studying the situation but have yet to provide a date by which the HST could be operating again. They say it can run successfully with one of the three functioning gyroscopes, with some slowdown to operations.
The painful part is this isn't the first time HST has gone down. It's not even the second time. It's just over two years from the last time the HST went down for a prolonged period, in November of '21. As recently as October, we covered NASA's budget problems supporting two of their three biggest and most expensive instruments, the HST and the Chandra X-Ray telescope (the other is the James Webb Space Telescope).
The root cause is that Hubble was launched in April of 1990, pretty much 33-1/2 years ago. Things wear out, especially moving parts like those gyroscopes, and nobody that designs a subsystem for anything like that would promise it could work forever. We're given reliability numbers of the form that there should be a specified, very high-percentage chance the instrument should last for some number of years. Reliability engineers generally do the calculations, but the circuit designers are responsible for ensuring parts get used in ways that assure the part isn't electrically or thermally overstressed. It's a team effort. This gets examined many times before a design is signed off on.
Remember Jared "Rook" Isaacman? He was an astronaut on the Inspiration 4 mission in 2021, and is currently set to lead the Polaris Dawn completely private mission with a spacewalk sometime next year. Isaacman tweeted simply, “Put us in coach.”
That was a reference to a study announced in September 2022 involving Isaacman, SpaceX and NASA to study the feasibility of a private mission to reboost and possibly repair Hubble using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. At the time Isaacman suggested that a Hubble mission could be the second of three planned Polaris missions.
The other response is NASA is saying they don't intend to pay for such a mission, instead offering it as an opportunity for companies to demonstrate their satellite servicing capabilities. They're anticipating budget cuts and are facing the hard reality that they may have to say goodbye to this old baby.
So here we have NASA, the embodiment of "old space" saying they want it done but can't pay for it, and Jared Isaacman, a representative of "space 2.0" saying, "let me at it!" How about if NASA handed off all of Hubble to the private sector? Hand over repair and maintaining its orbit to SpaceX (the only craft Isaacman has flown in and realistically the most dependable), and hand over the ground control, running missions, processing downloaded data, and the rest to some universities? It may be the only way to keep it running.
Artist's concept of the Crew Dragon with space walking astronaut with a photo of the Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit to Teslarati
Wow, SiG, talk about touching a live wire - I hope you're not grounded.
ReplyDeleteTurn control over to Private Enterprise!?!? NASA would have conniption fits and screams that would wake the dead! (I'm not sure at this point if they'd rather it die than relinquish control of it to somebody else, much less (gasp!) non-Gubmint Somebodies-or-other.)
But, time to fish or cut bait. Git-er-done or get outta the way, Old Men!
I like the idea. I'm not married to "tradition", nor am I a fiddler on the roof.
I have thought about that sort of thing before (private takeover/buyout), but with respect to the ISS. After all, they are talking about end-of-life for that too, and a privately owned space station would be ... incredible. Of course, it'll never happen but as long as we are dreaming, let's dream big.
ReplyDeleteThe European and American sections of the ISS are still good and have suffered few to no issues.
DeleteOn the other hand, the Russian garbage is what keeps failing and in new and unusual ways.
Overall, the whole thing is getting old and needs to be shut down by 2030. What is a shame is they're talking about deorbiting the whole thing.
I think, instead, they should use the good modules to possibly create 'storm shelters' in orbit, or mini-stations.
Or, you know, melt them down and blow the whole thing up into a giant ball and turn that into a station, in orbit, just to see if we can. And if it works, maybe make it into a space service station or breaker yard for recycling satellites and making more sphere stations out of the pieces parts.
Just like in all the sci-fi we know and love.
Never forget that the original Space Station Freedom had NO Russian garbage. However, Clinton could not tolerate anything named Freedom, and was desparate to shovel money to the Russians, so we got what we got WHERE we got it. Do remember the inclination is to suit the Russians. Which is why there was no hope to rescue the Columbia crew.
DeleteI worked for a battery company that eventually went almost broke and sold to another company because all the money, time and research spent for batteries for Freedom was pissed away. Hates the Clintons I does, hates them I say.
DeleteMusk has already floated the idea of SpaceX doing a service/upgrade mission on the Hubble, but that was just Musk being Musk. Visions of a Starship swallowing Hubble and working on it in space, that type of thing.
ReplyDeleteBut Isaacman? Yeah, that would be epic. NASA will probably baulk and insist one of their astronauts replace one of the crew so a 'professional astronaut' will be in charge, because NASA.
As I stated above, Beans, the screams would wake the dead. ANYbody non-NASA touches their stuff, they become Persona Non Grata because NASA is absolutely infused with the Not Invented Here syndrome and the Old Guy running the joint is political, political, political - which means he can't really think logically.
DeleteI don't hold out much hope, but zPigs Gonna Fly w/Amazon, so maybe there's hope for Isaacman to Git 'er Done! Stranger things have happened.
But what's actually important is NASA funding enough DEI. Or perhaps to make modern Muslims feel good about themselves. Generally speaking after the attack on Israel that religion can have a big self-pleasure session. Does that phrasing pass your platform's censors? While en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_of_the_High_Frontier is fiction, I can't wait until somebody does something similar. Maybe a radio telescope on the dark side of the moon with an aperature of one mile. Wouldn't that be fun? There'd be a line around the block to go work on that, wouldn't there?
ReplyDeleteHubble represents an enormous investment of tax dollars. If it's fixable it should be fixed and kept in service. But NASA woul rather spend allotted money on newer fancier toys rather than maintain an old design that is no longer "sexy". There's still plenty of universe left for Hubble to look at.
ReplyDeleteJust like the Voyager probes, eh?
DeleteDan, do a web search on the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Just because we've spent a lot of money on something doesn't mean it's smart to keep spending money on it. Sometimes it's best to cut your losses.
DeleteDon't get me wrong, HST is a wonderful instrument, but all parts eventually die. The decision on how much to spend on it should consider alternatives in orbit or on the moon. How much would astronomy be improved if we would produce a really big mirror telescope and put that in orbit?
The Nancy Grace telescope looks pretty good, but it seems to emphasize wide field, not high magnification/narrow field.
Yes... eventually it will become unrepairable. But after spending billions on it I it can be fixed with replacement gyroscopes and returned to service it's almost certainly across effective decision.
DeleteExcept you're entering into Space Shuttle territory.
DeleteOne of the reasons for ditching the shuttle was the technology was so outdated it was almost to actually impossible to repair/replace.
Add into the harsh environment of space (radiation, heating/cooling, all that) and the Hubble has pretty much reach end-of-life.
Now, if the Hubble was in the leeward side of the Moon from the Sun, then maybe the space environment wouldn't be too bad.
But, well, Hubble's kinda toast. You can make newer and better mirrors (that are ground correctly and don't require fixing) for cheaper than updating Hubble.
What would be cool would be to bring Hubble back and put it in a museum. Or make it part of the first Moon museum or orbital museum.
There have been many screens full of speculation on using Starship to retrieve Hubble. It's really the only hope we have of putting HST into a ground-based museum. Once Starship starts making routine flights.
DeleteThey could sell the ISS "as is-where is"... can it moved to higher orbit? Probably be cheaper just build a new one in a better orbit.
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ReplyDeleteDang Beans, I just reread me some John Ringo too. Let's get some mirrors up there and get to meltin.'
ReplyDeleteMy late aunt was dating the optical physicist who oversaw the original HST's lens design, and who later quit the program when one of his former students changed the specs to save money, creating the original screwup discovered on launch. He did lead the fix that was made, but said he could never love the HST after they messed up his beautiful plan.
No Lemon Law for the HST, sadly, but I love the idea of letting private industry take a crack at repair. I'd hope that whoever does foot the bill gets to take over management after. NASA is more concerned that any work be carried out by only by left-handed female gay muslim colorblind trans amputees rather than, you know, experts.
I know, let's mine orbit for all the metal up there. Would be a good way to clean the spaceways. Now if we only had nuclear powered tugs like we were supposed to have by now.
DeleteI'd love private industry to play with the Hubble and keep it working. But I doubt the current administration would allow that.
As to NASA's issues about Women and Minorities, yeah... But how to point out to them that white educated men ARE the minority worldwide? How mindboggling...
Perfect idea.
ReplyDeleteNASA (IOW taxpayers) funded the Colombus and Magellan equivalent missions.
ReplyDeleteIt's time to shut them most of the way down, and hand off the trade routes to the 21st century East India Company stand-ins.
Never forget that Hubble requires a SIGNIFICANT data link to operate. When Horrible was launched, I believe it used TDRS. Not sure what they currently use. Data links of that type are EXPENSIVE and highly regulated. And available bandwidth has to be shared with every other space project.
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