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Hubble Space Telescope May Get Reprieve

Posted on: Monday, 31 January 2005, 18:00 CST

NASA's plan to send a robot spacecraft to service the aging Hubble Space Telescope is encountering growing opposition from key aerospace experts. Some say the complex mission can't be launched in time. Others contend that even if it is, the chance of success is 50-50 or less.

Stiffening resistance to the robotics mission and the impending departure of NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, the mission's staunchest advocate, threaten to leave the agency with a dwindling number of options and a shrinking window of time to choose one. No successor to O'Keefe has yet been named.

If the agency doesn't decide how to fix the telescope this year, it may have to kiss the $2.5 billion instrument goodbye, a move certain to alienate hundreds of scientists and the legions of "Hubble huggers" who have been pressing the agency and Congress to keep it operating.

"The clock is running, and no certain plan is in place," Astronomy magazine editor Dave Eicher laments. "The next six months will decide whether Hubble is left to expire or is granted a new birth and second life before its career winds down."

Space shuttle astronauts have made four calls on the telescope during its nearly 15 years in orbit. They have changed out its batteries, replaced gyroscopes, and upgraded instruments that have given Earthbound astronomers a unique view of the universe from 360 miles in space.

Last year, for instance, Hubble captured the first images from the edge of the known universe, celestial bodies that formed soon after the big bang 13.7 billion years ago. It has helped detect more than 100 planets around other stars and made breathtaking images of distant galaxies.

"The Hubble Space Telescope has profoundly influenced almost every prominent problem in astronomy, ranging from the nearest solar system body to the most distant observable object in the universe," says Steven Beckwith, director of the Baltimore-based space telescope institute.

A service mission had been scheduled for 2006 to refurbish the telescope and boost it into a higher orbit to keep it operating well into the next decade.

But the loss of the space shuttle Columbia two years ago forced NASA to ground all shuttles for modifications and make some hard choices about how they would be used once flights resume, no earlier than mid-May.

O'Keefe decided last year, in what he called one of the "most painful decisions I've ever had to confront," that future flights would be limited to work on the international space station. The Hubble telescope would be allowed to expire when its batteries and gyros died.

O'Keefe blamed the decision on post-Columbia safety requirements that would limit the shuttle to visiting the space station, where damage to its thermal protection system could be repaired or, if not, the crew could seek shelter while awaiting rescue.

But the scientific community's response was swift and critical -- in part because the decision assured the early demise of what some called "the most important astronomical instrument since Galileo's telescope" -- and because it looked like a back-door way of diverting Hubble funds to President Bush's initiative for missions to the moon and Mars.

Pleas to reconsider the move came from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation's leading multidisciplinary science organization, as well as from the American Astronomical Society and the 30 institutions in the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.

More than 40,000 people signed public petitions to "save the Hubble" and 26 astronauts asked Bush to reinstate the Hubble service mission. After the House and Senate passed pro-Hubble resolutions of their own, NASA relented.

O'Keefe decided that it might be possible to piggyback a robotics repair module on a planned mission to launch a $300 million "de-orbit" module to dock with the defunct telescope and guide it during its life-ending plunge into the atmosphere. The two-missions-in one would extend Hubble's useful life to 2013.

Late last year, however, O'Keefe used his discretionary budget authority to move more than half of the $291 million earmarked for use in 2005 on the original telescope repair mission into other NASA programs. The NASA budget this year totals $16.2 billion.

The space agency is currently studying several robotics service concepts -- including one that would use Canada's two-armed Dextre space robot. But as the technical and economic realities of such missions have been examined outside the agency, doubts have mounted over the wisdom of sending a robot to do an astronaut's job.

In December, a 21-member panel of the National Academy of Sciences, which included experts from industry, government and academia, expressed major reservations about the proposed robotics mission.

Hubble during the last repair mission. Credit: NASA

Hubble during the last repair mission. Credit: NASA

"The design of such a mission, as well as the immaturity of the technology involved and the inability to respond to unforeseen failures, make it highly unlikely that NASA will be able to extend the scientific lifetime of the telescope through robotic servicing," warned the head of the panel, Louis Lanzerotti of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Despite NASA's concerns about shuttle safety, the panel said "the additional risk of going to Hubble versus going to the space station is not significant."

That stance has also been echoed by Adm. Harold Gehman, chairman of the commission that investigated the Columbia accident. He says there is "little difference" in the risks whether the shuttle goes to the international space station or to the telescope, which is at a higher orbit.

A more recent analysis, performed for NASA by the Aerospace Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., of 21 possible repair missions also supports the logic in using the shuttle astronauts.

That study found that it might cost up to $2 billion and take five years to prepare a robotic mission -- and noted that the Hubble would "likely fall into an unserviceable state" before it could be launched. And the analysis warns that even the simplest mission with unproven robotics technology faces a "high risk of failure." It concluded that the combination repair and de-orbit mission suggested by O'Keefe had only one chance in three of success.

NASA officials, who face hearings on the issue before the House Science Committee in February, say they won't decide what to do until the agency's own internal studies are complete later this year.

Time for a decision, however, is growing short. Two of Hubble's six stabilizing gyros are already inoperable. A third is expected to fail sometime in 2006, and a fourth is likely to go the next year.

Engineers have a contingency plan under which the telescope would function with only two gyros until 2007, but without repairs, it would be living on borrowed time.

Aviation Week, the aerospace industry's most influential magazine, has warned editorially that "something needs to be done about Hubble or it will begin degrading and fail by 2008 to 2009." It called NASA's decision to scrap the original service mission "unfortunate and unnecessary."

The 6,500-member American Astronomical Society this month underscored the urgency of the situation -- urging the space agency to forget about robotic repairs and reinstate its plans for a service call by the shuttle astronauts "as early as possible" after the shuttles are flying again.

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On the Net:

NASA

Hubble Space Telescope

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