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Public Bombards NASA Operators to Save Hubble

Posted on: Friday, 23 January 2004, 06:00 CST

By ALEX DOMINGUEZ

BALTIMORE (AP) -- The operators of the Hubble Space Telescope are being bombarded by suggestions from the public on how to save the craft - which NASA has decided not to service anymore - and say they are considering all offers.

Of the hundreds of e-mails, about a quarter ask, "Why can't the Russians help?"

Others suggest towing it to the space station for repairs, said Bruce Margon, associate director for science at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble for NASA.

"They are enormously concerned, they are perplexed, they are angry," Margon said. "They ask 'What percentage of the NASA budget is this?' And we tell them it's about 1 percent."

The Baltimore-based institute will set up a Web site to take suggestions from the public, he said.

The suggestions started arriving after NASA said last week it won't send the space shuttle in 2006 to service the Hubble, a mission considered essential to enable the orbiting telescope to continue operating. The Hubble has revolutionized the study of astronomy with its striking images of the universe.

Instead, NASA will focus on President Bush's plans to send humans to the moon and Mars. Virtually all remaining missions of the shuttle, which also is being phased out, will be used to complete construction of the International Space Station.

As for the suggestions received so far for saving the Hubble telescope, Margon said the Russians might be able to help, but towing the Hubble to the space station is impractical because the two are in very different orbits.

The space station is in a lower orbit, and takes a much different path around the Earth. If the Hubble could be moved into that orbit, it is not clear whether the space telescope could work because of drag from the small amount of the Earth's atmosphere present at that altitude, he said.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the ranking minority member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget, said in a letter to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe on Wednesday that she was shocked by the decision given the Hubble's extraordinary contributions to science.

"I ask you to reconsider your decision and appoint an independent panel of outside experts to fully review and assess all of the issues surrounding another Hubble servicing mission," Mikulski said.

The 2006 mission was to be the fifth and final mission to the space telescope before its planned retirement in 2010. The Hubble will eventually fall out of orbit and crash to Earth, probably in 2011 or 2012.

Another image of Hubble in space. Credit: NASA

Hubble's most famous photo shows a star birth factory in the Eagle Nebula. Credit: Hubble/NASA

"We feel that we should consider every conceivable idea to get back the last four to six years of discovery that Hubble was on the brink of making," Margon said.

NASA does eventually plan one final mission to Hubble, an as yet undesigned, unmanned rocket that will guide the space telescope back to Earth for a fiery crash into the Pacific. NASA originally planned to use the shuttle to retrieve Hubble and display it at the Smithsonian.

"That's part of the heartbreak, something is going to have to visit Hubble anyway," Margon said.

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