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To service and relaunch for the next 50 years?
by melling 5y ago
To service and relaunch for the next 50 years?
- pkaye 5y agoIf they could carry a larger payload, we could have a Hubble with a larger primary mirror. Some of the risks/costs of the JWST is all the folding mechanisms to fit the Ariane 5 payload enclosure.
- gotstad 5y agoThat does not strike me as the right direction of progression. We should become better at in-space assembly, not creating larger payload fairing.
- squeaky-clean 5y agoThere'd be no reason to take down the hubble just because a telescope with a larger mirror goes up. There's a lot of space to look at.
- headmelted 5y agoAlso a lot of really interesting science to be done by pointing Hubble and JWST at the same target. (NASA’s Curious Universe podcast is running a JWST series right now and this came up in a recent episode).
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoMuseum
- melling 5y agoBut the Hubble could be useful for another century. Talk about inspirational.
- rtkwe 5y agoIt's kind of limping along. It could gather images for a lot longer but it's hardware like gyroscopes are starting to fail. IMO the money to refurbish it would be better spent making a new instrument and cheaper too since you'd just need to build and launch not launch, capture, land, refurb, and relaunch.
- imglorp 5y agoWith telepresence and remote manipulators, we're at the point where a robotic service mission should be possible now.