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NASA returns Hubble to full science operations
- smingo 5y agoWould Hubble be able to resolve Webb? Or vice versa?
- wumpus 5y agoWebb is at L2, so if it wants to look at Hubble in low Earth orbit, it's going to be pointing at the sun.
- mnw21cam 5y agoL2 is further from the Sun than the Earth is, so no Hubble wouldn't be pointing at the Sun if it is looking at JWST.
- wumpus 5y agoI was only talking about JWST looking at Hubble for exactly that reason. Sorry you found my words confusing.
- rtkwe 5y agoL1 is inside the Earth's orbit (relative to the sun), L2 is outside, L3 is directly opposite the Earth, L4 is on the same orbit ahead of earth and L5 is on the same orbit behind the Earth.
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoWebb doesn't cover all the capabilities of Hubble. Its a "successor" not a "replacement"
- phinnaeus 5y ago"resolve" here means to see, as in, could Hubble take a photo of the JWT.
- Kye 5y agoMaking a guess based on my knowledge of photography: probably not. It's taking vast starscapes with a wide lens with a focus range (or fixed focus) made for shooting at infinity. That means the closer something is, the less in focus it'll be. Try looking at something right in front of your face. At its furthest, JWST will be at a proportional distance relative to what Hubble is equipped to focus on. Even stitching images together, it's always going to have similar focus. No amount of resolution will get past the physics of optics. Just a guess. I could be wrong!
- _moof 5y agoI'll add that Hubble has an angular resolution of 0.05 arcseconds, and Earth-Sun L2 is roughly 1,500,000 km away, which comes out to about 350 m resolution at that distance--fifteen times larger than JWST.
- smingo 5y agoWell that actually makes it almost plausible for Hubble to capture an image of JWST According to Wikipedia, the order is: Sun, L1, Earth, L2. So L2 is always in the night sky. I don't see issues with focus. 1.5M km is effectively infinity. Indeed for my camera on earth, 10m resolves as pretty much as well as infinity, f stops notwithstanding. JWST is about 20m by 14m in size. And it's out of the earth + moon shadow because of the nature of its orbit. It has a sun shield, and radio dish in the shield. The resolving power of 0.05 arcseconds at 1,500,000 km apogee is indeed 350 m (ish), which is much bigger than the JWST. The situation is worse at perigee. An image of JWST would take up less than 1% of Hubble 'pixel'. So there may be a faint blob, depending on the albedo of the JWST. (I don't know how Hubble's the photodetector arrays' resolution compares to the maximum resolving power of the lens.) However, Hubble's guidance systems have permitted astronomy at 0.0003 arcseconds, which comes out at a little over 2 m at JWST's range. So after a lot of computation, stacked images and fine-guidance shifting, presumably there could be an image of around 10 x 7 pixels (or whatever they are after the computation). And that's a result!
- skurtcastle 5y agoThat's awesome to hear. I'm excited for Dec 22nd when the James Webb launches. Crossing fingers big time.
- savant_penguin 5y ago*if
- bryanlarsen 5y ago30 days off terror for it to transit and unfold. Scary times!
- for1nner 5y agoEven longer for it to actually power up and start "working." Really excited for it, but feel like something akin to this hubble issue happening with the JW would be disastrous.
- keyle 5y agoThat warms my heart somehow, but I thought I had read that that was it for Hubble, like a year ago? Why the change of heart? Anyone got the full story, or did I cross my wires?
- pkaye 5y agoThere was some equipment failure last year. I think it was later diagnosed as a power control unit that failed. Fortunately there was a backup set they could switch to. Little by little parts are failing with time but they are nursing it along.
- croutonwagon 5y agoI think one of the primary payload computers failed but they were able to flip to auxiliary/backup. That was in July though It’s pretty much on borrowed time. I think they spent most of that outage trying to bring the main up and gave up. Must be fun troubleshooting something at like 400 km orbit. Heck I had to tell a lady she couldn’t wfh today because her cell data tethering wasn’t up to snuff to hold a connection to our vpn or do much of anything. She was seeing spurts of 10% loss on downstream and 200+ ms latency.
- scottyah 5y agoRemembering what you did and what you wanted to do next takes a lot of notes! It's really amazing controlling the drones on Mars, with all the traffic routed through a constellation of satellites, where the rotation even affects the latency.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoCan Hubble and JWST do simultaneous observation to extract more info of an object?
- wumpus 5y agoSure, they're different telescopes with different instruments and different sensitivities.
- onetwentythree 5y agoYes, that is being planned for, but I’m not sure if any cycle one proposals involve joint observations. https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-opportunities-and-policies/jwst-call-for-proposals-for-cycle-1/jwst-cycle-1-proposal-categories/general-observer-go-proposals/joint-jwst-hst-observing-programs https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-opportunities-and-policies/...
- kunai 5y agoOne of NASA's biggest mistakes wrt the demise of the STS/Shuttle program was not leaving some way lined up to service Hubble in orbit. The current crop of launch vehicles isn't suited to this task, despite us being ten years out from STS-135. It's proven itself an absolutely invaluable tool for research, but I think the even more impressive mission Hubble has shown itself as irreplaceable for is stimulating the public's mind for science and exploration. There's nothing like seeing photos of the universe in visual-light spectrum and thinking, "what if we went there?" JWST is amazing and I'm so glad it's finally launching but for that second use case, it trails Hubble.
- duxup 5y agoI thought the experience they had servicing Hubble actually meant that they generally didn’t want to have satellites that they would have to service due to costs involved. Maybe with the new options it becomes cheaper/ more viable.
- scottyah 5y agoI think JWST will be an amazing replacement as most space photos are doctored with visible light "interpretations" of other wavelengths already and nobody seems to notice/care as they have their minds blown. The process almost even adds to the beauty of them.
- kunai 5y agoThat's a good point. Regardless of how it shakes out, I'm really excited to see the first images from Webb. The implications this spacecraft could have for understanding the question of where we came from are immense.
- leephillips 5y agoHow do you visualize non-visible wavelengths except by using visible wavelengths? I mean, for humans.
- Qub3d 5y agoYou basically use a mapping function that assigns a visible wavelength to a corresponding non-visible one. Its as if you're manually red-shifting the light "down" the spectrum.
- Causality1 5y agoThe purpose of NASA is not only to explore but inspire. In light of that, I'd be fully supportive of using a Starship launch to bring Hubble home.
- make3 5y agoAs far as I understand it, that sounds super useless though. Maybe we should inspire people by doing useful science instead.
- dwaltrip 5y agoI would find it very inspiring to see the Hubble up close at a museum once it can no longer carry out its mission.
- melling 5y agoTo service and relaunch for the next 50 years?
- inter_netuser 5y agocollecting science?
- kevinventullo 5y agoI love the phrasing in “… is now operating with all four active instruments collecting science.” Reminds me of strategy games where feeding enough “science units” into opaque “research labs” unlocks branches of the technology tree.
- actually_a_dog 5y agoHah! You make it sound like they said "You must construct additional pylons," or something. :) What's the proper unit of measurement to quantify how much "science" they've collected, anyway? Bits?
- GhettoComputers 5y agoData or analytics instead of “science”
- fennecfoxen 5y agoIt only takes 300 units of science to research Nuclear Propulsion and 10,000 kerbucks to unlock the LV-N "Nerv" Atomic Rocket Motor. I say go for it. :)
- beefok 5y agocough Factorio cough :)
- tschwimmer 5y agoAfter all, we all know scientific progress can literally be distilled down into various colored liquid and poured into an erlenmeyer flask for easy consumption.
- iggldiggl 5y ago… or Kerbal Space Program
- wan23 5y agoFactorio science packs kind of make sense though. E.g. military science packs are made of bullets, grenades and walls, and you spend them to get better bullets and grenades and such. It's like an abstraction of spending some capacity to experiment on improving designs.
- lawrenceyan 5y agoI'd love to read a more in-depth overview/summarization on how fixes were implemented for each of the sensors. Great job to the NASA team!
- mkw5053 5y agoHaving worked at Lockheed on the engineering side of Hubble for four summers as an intern during undergrad, the idea of the telescope reaching its end of life makes me deeply sad.
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