By Jacqueline Ruttimann
Special to the Sentinel
If heroic attempts by Barbara Mikulski and local space agencies fail, the Hubble Space Telescope's days are numbered.
On January 21, 2005, NASA announced that it would cancel all space shuttle missions to the Hubble. NASA's decision has left both the scientific community and general public stunned, since the Hubble revolutionized the study of astronomy with its striking images of the universe. The most notable of Hubble's discoveries include the confirmation of dark matter, observations supporting the current accelerating universe theory, and studies of extra-solar planets.
Hubble has been on the front page for the past 10 years. "It is hard to rectify how something that generates so much attention and goodwill will have its plug pulled," said Ray Villard, news chief of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who compared the Hubble to earlier human works such as the building of the cathedrals during the Middle Ages and the raising of the pyramids in Ancient Egypt.
In a National Academy of Sciences final report that was released on December 8, 2004, a blue ribbon group of experts said that NASA should reinstate a space shuttle mission to refurbish the Earth-orbiting telescope that circles the Earth every 97 minutes.
NASA has not budgeted any funding to upgrade the telescope although it is still being discussed in Congress. Maryland is home to two major Hubble facilities, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the most senior member who sits on the Senate subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget, along with other Maryland congressional members, have asked for a review of NASA's decision and sent a letter to NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe on the same day as the announcement was made. The letter also called for an independent panel of outside experts to assess the situation and for NASA to continue all preparations for the servicing mission until Congress has a chance to weigh in.
"Hubble's best days are ahead of it, not behind it. That's why I am so disappointed that President Bush has failed to include funding in this year's budget for a servicing mission that would extend the life of the Hubble," Mikulski said in a statement released on her official Web site on February 7, 2005, "I will fight in the United States Senate this year to fund a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008, a mission that would potentially increase Hubble's power and efficiency by a factor of 10 and allow us to look back almost to the beginning of the universe."
NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe cited the agency's reasons for not servicing the Hubble included the prevention of unnecessary risk to the astronauts and President George W. Bush's plans to send humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond. Contrary to what was previously reported by the press, the decision was not made when President Bush unveiled the 2006 fiscal year budget on February 7, 2005.
Adm. Hal Gehman, chairman of the NASA board that investigated the Space Shuttle Columbus accident, will review and send his opinion to NASA according to a letter sent from NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe to Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski. Web sites dedicated to saving the Hubble Space Telescope, such as savethehubble.org, have now emerged.
Named after Edwin Hubble, the telescope's beginning and ending has been linked by Space Shuttle disasters. Originally slated to launch in the mid 1980s, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 caused its launch to be postponed until April 24, 1990, when it was finally launched as a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. Hubble was expected to be serviced in 2005, but once again, due to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, it has now been postponed indefinitely. NASA planned to visit Hubble by 2006 to change out instruments and replace its batteries and gyroscopes, with the intent of keeping the telescope in service until its heir apparent, the James Webb Space Telescope is up and running. That telescope, now in development, is scheduled for launch around 2011.
Hubble was designed to be serviced by space-walking astronauts from the Space Shuttle. Weighing in at 11,000 kg, with a length of 13.2 meters and a maximum diameter of 4.2 meters, the Hubble has a remarkable modular design, easily removable parts, handrails and other astronaut-friendly features. Servicing missions in the past, of which there have been four, swapped out failed hardware, such as the faulty mirrors that plagued the telescope performance at the beginning, perform upgrades, and to counter atmospheric drag by boosting the telescope back into higher orbit.
"The Hubble, like the Pope, has been counted down and out, but has come back again and again from the brink," said Joseph Tatarewicz, professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, who spoke last weekend at a national symposia for the American Association for the Advancement of Science that took place in Washington D.C.
Lack of a future service mission can result in the failure of the telescope in four ways: instruments, gyroscopes, batteries and reentry. Already some of the instruments are failing, such as the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), a two-part electronic set whose first set of electronics failed on May 2001 and its second set failed on August 3, 2004. The gyroscopes, or balancing equipment that allows ground controllers to position the telescope, will all fail by 2012. Work is currently underway to extend their life by allowing the HST to run only on two gyroscopes. The battery life will also run out between mid-2007 and 2010. Finally, if a shuttle or other means does not reboost the HST, it will reenter the Earth's atmosphere sometime between 2010 and 2032.
However, not all of the telescope will burn up on reentry as parts of the main mirror and its support structure are expected to survive, leaving the potential for damage or human fatalities (estimated at a one in 700 chance of human fatality for a completely uncontrolled reentry). Without repair, the Hubble Telescope is expected to have major failure by the end of 2007. If nothing is done to save the Hubble, NASA says that it will dispatch a robotic mission to de-orbit it safely to the ocean by 2010 or 2013 at the latest.
Photo courtesy of NASA