Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure

Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by skrause on Monday October 08, 2018 @04:58AM (#18165534)

There are no more Space Shuttles that could service Hubble. When it fails it will simply be dead.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by yholio on Monday October 08, 2018 @05:02AM (#18165566)

(Cut to Elon Musk, who begins to furiously sketch some plans on a paper napkin)

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by melling on Monday October 08, 2018 @08:40AM (#18166872)

Cut to Hacker News 4 years ago this month when I tried to make the case for sophisticated unmanned space exploration:

“For example, if the Hubble, or its replacement, needs to be fixed, we should have an unmanned answer, for instance”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540712

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by maxerickson on Monday October 08, 2018 @06:46AM (#18166192)

The right thing to do would be to launch a bunch of new ones.

(NASA estimated the marginal cost of launching a shuttle to be $450 million, which is going to be most of the cost of assembling a big telescope. Note that I said "assembling" and not "developing".)

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by Cthulhu_ on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:41AM (#18166489)

Would it be feasible if they "just" rebuild the Hubble with the original plans? I mean it's 30 years old by now but it's a solid device. That would save on development at least.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by thaeli on Monday October 08, 2018 @09:26AM (#18167165)

DOD transferred two "obsolete" KH-11 spy satellites (which are pretty much evolved Hubbles) to NASA in 2012. They've been in storage since. So the scope for a "new build Hubble" is putting instruments on those sats, launching them, and supporting the ongoing mission. That's still substantial, but much less than a new build from scratch.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by ISL on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:35AM (#18168370)

One of them is, as far as I know, now dedicated to WFIRST:

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/02/18/nasa-moves-forward-wit...

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by kevin_thibedeau on Monday October 08, 2018 @01:37PM (#18169484)

It was just the mirrors. Earth observing telescopes aren't useful for deep space.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by dredds on Monday October 08, 2018 @08:22AM (#18166749)

The infrastructure no longer exists. The tooling no longer exists. Miniaturization makes old designs obsolete. Design is now the cheapest part of manufacturing.

(See "Can we rebuild Saturn V in 2018") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhIfeS3OumY

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by londons_explore on Monday October 08, 2018 @08:10AM (#18166671)

Rebuilding electronics from original plans which are 30 years old will be very hard. Components will have gone out of production, and minor design changes to accommodate new replacements will lead to a cascade of things which need recertifying.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by baldfat on Monday October 08, 2018 @09:20AM (#18167111)

It took over 2 years just to make the wave mirror.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by GTP on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:55AM (#18166575)

I don't know if NASA will ever plan to send a mission to repair it since it's already well over it's intended lifetime (by well over I mean several years which is a lot).

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by baldfat on Monday October 08, 2018 @09:21AM (#18167117)

The decay date for the Hubble is 2030-2040 so we should possibly get another 12 to 22 years.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by maxnoe on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:05AM (#18166277)

It only needs to be operational until the James Webb Telescope is available.

As soon as this happens, most astronomers will jump ship anyway

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by SiempreViernes on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:24AM (#18166383)

Ha, good one! :D

Like saying "it just needs to work until Longhorn ships" ;)

In any case, JWST doesn't have UV capability, so it is not a straightforward replacement of what Hubble does. It just able to look at more distant objects because they've all been red shifted into the IR.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by InclinedPlane on Monday October 08, 2018 @04:42PM (#18171122)

JWST and HST are not comparable telescopes. Moreover, the idea that astronomers would stop using one world class telescope just because another one (even a better one) exists is sheer lunacy. Even if a space telescope that was worse than Hubble existed it would still be completely 100% booked in terms of observation time, because there is much more demand for those capabilities than there is supply, by orders of magnitude.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by kamaal on Monday October 08, 2018 @10:51AM (#18167973)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/science/nasa-webb-telesco...

Basically it will be launched in March 2021, if at all.

By the way, every-time the launch year approaches they delay it by a good 2 - 3 years, and this has been the case almost forever.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by baq on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:29AM (#18166411)

completely different devices built for completely different purposes. there's nothing quite like the hubble.

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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by yholio on Monday October 08, 2018 @12:34PM (#18168891)

Sure, but the jump is still tempting for the scientific top brass. There's only so much that can be learned in the visible spectrum and only so many Noble prizes, PhDs, tenures and grants to be had. Staying on Hubble is scraping the barrel when the new sexy JWST promises to open whole new fields of scientific inquiry.

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