16 ms·

SpaceX exploring mission to boost Hubble

169 points by tectonic 4y ago

themanmaran 4y ago
It's amazing to see a 32 year old chunk of hardware remain active and useful to this day. And projected to remain functioning for another 15 years. While James Webb has become the new celebrity satellite, Hubble is still cranking out scans every week. It even caught some of the DART impact last week[1]. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-hubble-capture-detailed-views-of-dart-impact https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-hubble-captur...
- Thaxll 4y ago
  SOLID engineering.
- mlyle 4y ago
  Yup. Though--- I do wonder about the desire to keep it functioning at all costs. Servicing is expensive: humans and their consumables aren't cheap. I wonder what we'd get instead if we dumped equivalent or slightly more resources into a new telescope, instead.
  - kijin 4y ago
    Perhaps if we keep it in orbit long enough, robot technology will improve to a point where we don't need to send any humans to service the Hubble anymore. Also, servicing the Hubble is exactly the kind of mission that commercial space ventures can use to showcase their tech. Relatively low risk, high media exposure. A pretty good practice ground, really.
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      By the time robotics advances to that point, it would most certainly be economical to manufacture a significantly more capable replacement telescope, wouldn't it? As far as I know, there isn't any particularly exotic materials in Hubble, it's just a big heavy precision manufactured (lol) object. Even right now, it seems like the real cost of a falcon heavy launch is relatively low. We would get more science for the money by mass producing several higher performance telescopes with fewer reliability requirements.
  - rlt 4y ago
    True for now, but Starship, if full and rapid reusability is achieved, will radically change the economics of space missions.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    The next gen space telescopes are already being planned. It just takes a long time to get them completed. In the mean time, we have a working telescope. We should just let it die and not be used while we wait for the next to come about?
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Because servicing it (beyond reboost) may be the same cost as launching something new that offers better performance.
      - roywiggins 4y ago
        The proposed "better Hubble" that would launch in the 2040s is projected to cost $11 billion. That's a fair few servicing missions; it sounds like we can probably afford to do both, and if so, why not? Keeping Hubble around doing science longer is still useful even with a successor planned. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/science/astronomy-decadal-survey-telescope.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/science/astronomy-decadal...
      - micromacrofoot 4y ago
        Not to mention that NASA doesn't have the kind of blank check budget that the military has (by a longshot) — in a budget overview they may have to cut service for old projects to even get research on new projects funded.
      - smegger001 4y ago
        when it comes to something like this you are forgetting the government redtape involved in building a new one is likely a bigger cost than the actual engineering building and launching.
      - dylan604 4y ago
        Since Hubble is at the upper range of LEO which made shuttle missions difficult, I've always wondered if they could make it slow down enough to lower its orbit more easily accessible for orbiters where part of the refurb is to refuel it so that it could get back to operating orbit. Maybe not Hubble, but maybe the next gen?
  - dwheeler 4y ago
    I expect NASA to do the calculations, but I would expect boosting the orbit of an existing working telescope would be much cheaper than building a new one AND ALSO putting it in orbit. There are relatively few telescopes outside Earth's atmosphere; keeping Hubble running seems like a good idea.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      It's not just orbital boosting. It's also doing things like swapping out reaction wheels and dying hardware of various kinds. And as soon as you're doing that, you're probably using humans. And then because the cost is already so big, you might as well replace some instruments, too...
      - deelowe 4y ago
        Do they plan to do more manned missions to Hubble?
        mlyle 4y ago
        Hubble re-enters in 2037, and is useless because of orbital mechanics a few years before that. I think it's unlikely the current reaction wheel system lasts to that ~2032 timeframe, let alone significantly beyond. Of 6 wheels, 2 are working well, 1 is dodgy, and 3 have failed. 3 are required to keep orientation.
        mkw5053 4y ago
        I thought they could now control it with only 2 reaction wheels [1] [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10543974.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10543974.pdf
        gs17 4y ago
        This proposal (by being part of Polaris) is implied to be manned as far as I can tell.
  - pkaye 4y ago
    The next space telescope will be the Nancy Grace Roman telescope which is a wide angle telescope so not an exact replacement. https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ The longer term goal is the Luvoir telescope but its not yet been approved and will probably require significant R&D like JWST. https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/ https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/
    - mlyle 4y ago
      Sure. I'm not talking about the timelines of existing plans for new telescopes. I'm comparing ROI vs: - mission to reboost and service Hubble in various ways - launching a new space telescope mission
      - Sharlin 4y ago
        It takes about fifteen years from concept studies to launch for a Hubble-class space telescope. I guess you could make it in ten if you just chose to replicate Hubble's instruments and if NRO had another spare Keyhole stashed somewhere...
        MichaelCollins 4y ago
        The NRO donated two and parts for a third to NASA in 2012. One is apparently being used for the Roman Space Telescope, which would seem to leave another and a primary mirror of a third still unused.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - Sharlin 4y ago
    We're going to have another Hubble up in 2027 if all goes well: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, or Roman for short. Originally known as WFIRST, it's a 1.6m-primary-mirror declassified Keyhole spy sat similar to Hubble, but with a shorter focal length and thus a much wider field of view (around 1/4 square degrees, roughly the area of a full moon). Still, its angular resolution will be comparable to Hubble thanks to a much higher-resolution, 300 megapixel imager. It's a visible/near IR instrument, so won't replace Hubble's near UV capabilities. Also, Roman won't have a traditional spectrograph on board. What it will have, however, is a novel coronagraphic instrument for imaging and spectrography of companions of nearby stars (brown dwarfs and gas giants in wide orbits -- still no imaging exo-Earths or even exo-Jupiters, alas). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc... https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html
    - causi 4y ago
      Why do they call it an infrared telescope when it doesn't see in the infrared spectrum?
      - Sharlin 4y ago
        It does in near IR, but yeah, it’s as much a visible light telescope as an IR one.
      - Someone 4y ago
        It sees the near infrared. I expect they got that for free from the camera sensor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_cameras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_c...: “Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to infrared light, which would interfere with the normal photography by confusing the autofocus calculations or softening the image (because infrared light is focused differently from visible light), or oversaturating the red channel. Also, some clothing is transparent in the infrared, leading to unintended (at least to the manufacturer) uses of video cameras”
  - jjk166 4y ago
    A new hubble-scale space telescope is a multibillion dollar project - Hubble cost about $7 billion in 2022 dollars at the time of launch, JWST cost $10 billion. By comparison, a manned servicing mission would likely cost in the mid hundreds of millions, or about 1-10% of the cost of a new telescope. It's unlikely that a one time injection of cash would buy much additional functionality for future satellites. By comparison, buying an extra few years before you need a proper replacement satellite would allow you to build a substantially better telescope at the same annual funding rate, or build the same telescope at a lower annual funding rate.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Things only cost that much per unit because they are one-offs. The trick to saving pots of money is to build duplicates, which will not incur research, design, tooling, test rig, etc., costs.
      - WWLink 4y ago
        The other problem with these is the big super high quality optical mirrors. Going to a production line with those would be really interesting! I don't think you'd get a big enough economy of scale to mass produce them in a just-in-time pipeline though.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Once you've designed and built the grinding machine (I saw a picture of it, it fills a special room) you've done most of it. Same for the custom test rig. SpaceX shows what happens to costs when you re-use designs and tooling.
      - zopa 4y ago
        True but there's also decreasing marginal utility for each duplicate. A second telescope in any given class would be awesome but it's always going to be less groundbreaking and useful than the first one.
- jcims 4y ago
  I'd love to see an xprize kind of award for design of a disposable, flat pack 1m space telescope. Get the unit costs down to <$1m (ground-based 1m scopes are $500k) and put 100 of them up into orbit and make time available for very low cost. As this is operationalized you could incrementally increase the capability and specialty with each release.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    What would you be looking for exactly tho? What are the advantages - what could be studied in this way? One million dollars is really low for space ready equipment no?
    - m463 4y ago
      a bunch of them together might be "crowdsourced" weather satellites.
    - _joel 4y ago
      Generally, not for cubesats though, but irrelevant to disposable mirrors
    - jcims 4y ago
      Access. I spent about 100 hours on a shitty 11" Celestron last year learning all sorts of things about space and optics and image processing. I'm hooked even though the results are terrible. I can rent time on some big scopes in high places, but the results are still subject to all of the artifacts and attenuation of the atmosphere. Putting up a large number of reasonably capable space telescopes could be a tremendous boon to space education and even science. Look at atmospheric transmittance charts, there are entire areas of the spectrum that we can't even see from the ground. Having all of that research piled up behind billion dollar hardware pipelines doesn't foster a lot of attention or momentum.
      - deleted 4y ago
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      - 4y ago
- oldgradstudent 4y ago
  > It's amazing to see a 32 year old chunk of hardware remain active and useful to this day. And projected to remain functioning for another 15 years. With only a few billion dollars spent on maintenance, including five space shuttle servicing missions.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    So what? Scientific exploration costs money and I'm happy for my tax dollars to pay for this
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    My stereo plays all day every day for over 40 years now :-)
    - WWLink 4y ago
      Your stereo's electronics are also pretty well protected against radiation. That radiation has a habit of frying electronics (even rad hard ones) after a while.
- baq 4y ago
  What’s more amazing is that the NRO has multiple more capable telescopes in orbit as we speak and we’re celebrating that NASA doesn’t have to spend money to keep that old piece of hardware useful for a few more years. Which isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but it just feels odd that priorities are shifted so much towards black projects.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    There are also two "Stubby Hubble" chassis sitting in storage because they're so obsolete that the NRO just donated them. However there is no budget to actually be able to use them. If the famously secretive[1] NRO can just donate that, imagine how far ahead their newer stuff is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O... [1]: founded in 1960, but only officially acknowledged in 1973 and then by accident.
    - 51Cards 4y ago
      I think one of those is currently being turned into the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, though I haven't heard about progress in awhile.
      - contact9879 4y ago
        It's been renamed to the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope scheduled to launch May 2027. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
      - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
        Well colour me updated! That's nice to hear.
    - rdhatt 4y ago
      ... imagine how far ahead their newer stuff is. Trump gave the whole world a good idea how far ahead the newer stuff is when he tweeted an image from an NRO satellite. Estimated at ~10cm/pixel resolution. Scott Manley published a great break down: https://youtu.be/JRLVFn9z0Gc https://youtu.be/JRLVFn9z0Gc
- cronix 4y ago
  Voyager is still going after about 46 years and about 14.7 billion miles from earth (and counting). https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Honestly Webb is way overhyped for what it is. Almost 8 times the mirror area of Hubble, three decades more advanced cameras, placed so far beyond any possible interference and it makes images that are at best twice as good and roughly at the same magnification. That photo of Jupiter was pretty disappointing in comparison. With only limited yaw control and no articulation of any kind I was frankly surprised that it was able to see DART at all.
  - jorgesborges 4y ago
    The point of the Webb telescope isn’t to take pictures! It’s to collect data. It can “see” way further into the early universe by examining infrared light, which Hubble cannot do.
  - cookingrobot 4y ago
    My understanding: what’s great about Webb is that it can take pictures in the infrared. It has to be really cold to do this, hence the big complicated heat shield. Infrared let’s us see things that are further away, because when something’s really far away it gets red-shifted down out of the visible spectrum into the infrared (due to expansion of the universe). So it’s not really any better at imaging things that are close / in the visible spectrum like Jupiter.
  - dmix 4y ago
    I just assumed the general public isn't the main user of Webb. I figured infrared is more interesting to scientists than me. Why else would they have chosen that? Maybe they'll figure out a way to translate the colours better for consumption.
  - eatsyourtacos 4y ago
    They didn't create Webb to put better pictures as your desktop background. Saying it's "overhyped" because you don't understand what it's for is just peak internet, isn't it.
    - moffkalast 4y ago
      The media hyping people up for pictures of a scientific data collector that doesn't mean anything to most people is probably the definition of overhyped.
_joel 4y ago
It's great Jared and the team at Polaris can help extend it, I hope Starship or similar will capture it and bring it back to earth, it deserves to be in a museum not end in a fireball
mnw21cam 4y ago
It's great to see plans to boost the orbit, but I'm thinking it's going to need some maintenance as well fairly soon.
- Me1000 4y ago
  In the NASA announcement last week they said the studies theyre doing include various kinds of servicing of Hubble, not just boosting it.
  - nekoashide 4y ago
    It was a big deal last time and it will be an even bigger deal this time. I'm not sure they had planned for another service mission so who knows if they still have replacement gyros and hardware for it now. Hubble is a bit old though and space is not very friendly, it seems like a risky mission but I guess the cost to service it today is cheaper than making a new one.
dougmwne 4y ago
Could Hubble be feasibly operational past 2037 without maintenance? Would this just be a boost mission or repair also?
- yellowapple 4y ago
  I'm wondering the same thing. Last servicing was in 2009; poor thing is long overdue for some TLC.
- Me1000 4y ago
  NASA said in their announcement that the explorations they're doing include the feasibility of various kinds of servicing, not just boosting.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Given Hubble's gyroscope failure problem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Gyroscope_rotation_sensors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Gyrosco... - I would not count on it lasting long enough for Jared & Co. to get there. (My impression was that gyroscope replacement was a "dedicated space shuttle flight and multiple EVA's" sort of job - likely a big reach for SpaceX / Dragon / Polaris, which have flown zero EVA missions so far.) Edit: Sounds like the gyroscopes lasting long enough for Jared & Co. to get there is pretty sure. But depending on the design service life of the still-working gyro's - and a load of other critical items - 2037 is still a huge ask.
  - mkw5053 4y ago
    Hubble can operate with down to 1 gyro [1]; however, the viewable regions of the sky are limited. [1] https://esahubble.org/about/general/gyroscopes/ https://esahubble.org/about/general/gyroscopes/
  - HALtheWise 4y ago
    It should be possible to "fix" the gyroscopes by simply mounting a unit to the docking port or somewhere else on the exterior that contains a brand new gyroscope system, without needing to remove any of the existing broken gyros. It's probably necessary to make some electrical connections, but I guess it could even be possible for the strap-on gyros to have their own power electronics if that makes things easier.
jacobriis 4y ago
"Without a boost, the thrusterless telescope is expected to re-enter and burn up around 2037" If the government pays for this, hopefully they wait for the cost to orbit to fall after Starship is operational. Seemingly there's no hurry.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  It’s only $67M for a Falcon 9 launch. NASA’s 2022 budget is $24B. Boost while you’ve got the political will, don’t pinch pennies and possibly miss the window to do so. Future expected ongoing science value is likely higher than the F9-Starship cost delta.
  - bpodgursky 4y ago
    It's about opportunity cost though. Is there another $67M mission we're losing?
    - kranke155 4y ago
      I think OP is saying (and I agree) opportunity cost in space budgeting is more political and not economical.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > It’s only $67M for a Falcon 9 launch. You're under costing it. A Crew Dragon mission is ~$287 million. That number is probably high because government orgs tend to have additional costs associated with launching for them above and beyond a typical commercial mission. But certainly much higher than $67 million. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-awards-spacex-more-crew-flights-to-space-station https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-awards-spacex-more-crew-fl...
    - 4y ago
1970-01-01 4y ago
Ship it to L2, so you can service both telescopes with one mission.
- Denvercoder9 4y ago
  This doesn't make any sense. L2 is 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth (4 times the distance to the moon!), while Hubble currently orbits at about 540 km. Moving it to L2 will make it much, much harder to service. Once we have technology to do servicing missions at L2, doing another one in LEO will be child's play.
  - 1970-01-01 4y ago
    If this is the very last service mission, pushing Hubble to L2 does make sense. More reboost missions will cost more than its current value. But if you just happen to have a Webb refuel mission in the two decades, you can add-on a Hubble service mission with very low cost and extend its value one more time.
    - outworlder 4y ago
      Space is big. Just because both are in L2 doesn't mean they will be close.
      - 1970-01-01 4y ago
        It's a configurable setting
      - baq 4y ago
        It’s also not that expensive to change planes that far out so being close isn’t a big requirement
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        When you have months to scoot between them, they might as well be a hundred feet apart.
- 4y ago
jagger27 4y ago
We could have another dozen Hubble clones in orbit and they'd still be booked solid for years. It's just such a fantastic piece of kit, decades later. I see the value in servicing it, but I'd be even happier to see a few Falcon Heavy launches with modern versions of Hubble. In my opinion it's the least SpaceX could do for the brutal damage to the night sky Starlink has done.
- thinkcontext 4y ago
  Has anyone ballparked what a modern Hubble would cost to build?
  - CommieBobDole 4y ago
    The National Reconnaissance Office gave NASA a couple of unused KH-11s back in 2012, which is what Hubble is based on in the first place. They're using one of them for WFIRST, which is apparently expected to cost ~$4 billion, but that's the whole project cost including 5 years of operations.
    - thinkcontext 4y ago
      Thanks. I see its also going to be in L2, that must raise costs considerably.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > We could have another dozen Hubble clones in orbit We probably do already, they're just pointed in the wrong direction and unavailable for scheduling.
  - coolspot 4y ago
    They are available for scheduling, just not to astronomers.
foxyv 4y ago
If the fairing was just a little bit longer on the Falcon 9 it could easily launch another one of these. But the dang thing cost $4.3 billion just to build and launch so I can see why they would want to repair instead of re-build. Especially since Dragon is so freaking cheap compared to the shuttle. However, outfitting Dragon for EVA would be a freaking PITA considering the certification process. More likely they would have to launch an EVA module separately that Dragon would dock to that had the necessary airlock to remove the need to depressurize Dragon. I could see them designing a cheaper less dear version of Hubble now that launch costs are so much lower. But repairing it definitely makes a lot of sense.
- _joel 4y ago
  Polaris are doing an EVA mission next year on dragon. There will be mods but essentially they're tethered by an umbilical and they'll depressurise the entire vessel
  - foxyv 4y ago
    That's awesome! Edit: So they would have existing art to work off of for a Hubble mission. Neat!
    - _joel 4y ago
      First private citizen spacewalk!
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    thats sounds like the dragon is significantly inferiour to the shittle when it comes to EVA
    - foxyv 4y ago
      Yes, Dragon was intended to carry people to ISS. Shuttle was designed for EVA from the start.
zeristor 4y ago
One key thing is that they realised how to fix the gyroscopes which kept failing, with the new design gyroscopes it can keep pointing, replacing those would require a crew.
mabbo 4y ago
The holy grail here is to figure out a way to not just boost it, but start doing some part replacement work on Hubble. There's wonky computers, gyroscopes, and likely other parts that just need a swap out. Hubble is designed to let people do this. The only problem is that doing it today requires a person in a very bulky space suit that won't fit through the Dragon's door. Perhaps a robot?
- ghufran_syed 4y ago
  The polaris dawn mission is planned to use starship, and will aim to do the first private EVA. And the hubble boost mission would also use starship. So it’s definitely a possibility!
  - ghufran_syed 4y ago
    although now I think about it, if starship works, they could capture hubble, return it to earth, fix it and then relaunch it
    - baq 4y ago
      No point coming back home to fix it; better launch a brand new one as everything inside would be replaced anyway
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > The polaris dawn mission is planned to use starship, and will aim to do the first private EVA. And the hubble boost mission would also use starship. So it’s definitely a possibility! I think you're a bit confused. Polaris Dawn is the 1st of 3 missions, and it will be using a Crew Dragon capsule. The Hubble boost mission is the 2nd mission; I suppose it's possible that it could be using Starship, but there's no word so far that it's likely. Currently, the 2nd mission is planning on using Crew Dragon and docking to Hubble with a device located in the trunk. It's the 3rd mission that's planned to use Starship. https://polarisprogram.com/ https://polarisprogram.com/
    - 4y ago
geocrasher 4y ago
As usual, Scott Manley did an excellent analysis of the possibilities and the challenges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXarNOCMV3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXarNOCMV3c
alberth 4y ago
I wonder if this is the equivalent of me having some 40 year old Nikon camera lenses. Lenses are still great, sharp and clear. But I’ve updated the camera sensors, housing etc over the years - all while still using the same decades old lenses.
- m463 4y ago
  It took a while for me to discover that truth about DSLR (SLR) lenses. My attention was always on the camera and lenses weren't that interesting. Turns out the lenses last and the camera bodies are soon obsolete. There are some exceptional they-don't-build-them-like-they-used-to lenses, like the canon 50mm f1.0 Of course with mirrorless you can use old lenses with a spacer, but now canon for instance is coming out with both r-mount and tiny m-mount lenses and you can gradually buy your collection over again. (and there are still interesting things going on like the rf 85mm f1.2 normal and now DS model)
  - walrus01 4y ago
    One of the big differences, however, with modern lenses is active image stabilization. Various "IS" and "VR" things in Nikon and Canon and similar lenses. Very important if shooting handheld and you want to take shots at slightly lower ISOs with less graininess in low light conditions, and for handheld videography with the same lenses. The active stabilization many modern DSLR and mirrorless market lenses is worth a few f-stops difference.

169 points by tectonic 4y ago

It's amazing to see a 32 year old chunk of hardware remain active and useful to this day. And projected to remain functioning for another 15 years. While James Webb has become the new celebrity satellite, Hubble is still cranking out scans every week. It even caught some of the DART impact last week[1]. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-hubble-capture-detailed-views-of-dart-impact https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-hubble-captur...

Thaxll 4y ago
SOLID engineering.
mlyle 4y ago
Yup. Though--- I do wonder about the desire to keep it functioning at all costs. Servicing is expensive: humans and their consumables aren't cheap. I wonder what we'd get instead if we dumped equivalent or slightly more resources into a new telescope, instead.
- kijin 4y ago
  Perhaps if we keep it in orbit long enough, robot technology will improve to a point where we don't need to send any humans to service the Hubble anymore. Also, servicing the Hubble is exactly the kind of mission that commercial space ventures can use to showcase their tech. Relatively low risk, high media exposure. A pretty good practice ground, really.
  - sgtnoodle 4y ago
    By the time robotics advances to that point, it would most certainly be economical to manufacture a significantly more capable replacement telescope, wouldn't it? As far as I know, there isn't any particularly exotic materials in Hubble, it's just a big heavy precision manufactured (lol) object. Even right now, it seems like the real cost of a falcon heavy launch is relatively low. We would get more science for the money by mass producing several higher performance telescopes with fewer reliability requirements.
- rlt 4y ago
  True for now, but Starship, if full and rapid reusability is achieved, will radically change the economics of space missions.
- dylan604 4y ago
  The next gen space telescopes are already being planned. It just takes a long time to get them completed. In the mean time, we have a working telescope. We should just let it die and not be used while we wait for the next to come about?
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Because servicing it (beyond reboost) may be the same cost as launching something new that offers better performance.
    - roywiggins 4y ago
      The proposed "better Hubble" that would launch in the 2040s is projected to cost $11 billion. That's a fair few servicing missions; it sounds like we can probably afford to do both, and if so, why not? Keeping Hubble around doing science longer is still useful even with a successor planned. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/science/astronomy-decadal-survey-telescope.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/science/astronomy-decadal...
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      Not to mention that NASA doesn't have the kind of blank check budget that the military has (by a longshot) — in a budget overview they may have to cut service for old projects to even get research on new projects funded.
    - smegger001 4y ago
      when it comes to something like this you are forgetting the government redtape involved in building a new one is likely a bigger cost than the actual engineering building and launching.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Since Hubble is at the upper range of LEO which made shuttle missions difficult, I've always wondered if they could make it slow down enough to lower its orbit more easily accessible for orbiters where part of the refurb is to refuel it so that it could get back to operating orbit. Maybe not Hubble, but maybe the next gen?
- dwheeler 4y ago
  I expect NASA to do the calculations, but I would expect boosting the orbit of an existing working telescope would be much cheaper than building a new one AND ALSO putting it in orbit. There are relatively few telescopes outside Earth's atmosphere; keeping Hubble running seems like a good idea.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    It's not just orbital boosting. It's also doing things like swapping out reaction wheels and dying hardware of various kinds. And as soon as you're doing that, you're probably using humans. And then because the cost is already so big, you might as well replace some instruments, too...
    - deelowe 4y ago
      Do they plan to do more manned missions to Hubble?
      - mlyle 4y ago
        Hubble re-enters in 2037, and is useless because of orbital mechanics a few years before that. I think it's unlikely the current reaction wheel system lasts to that ~2032 timeframe, let alone significantly beyond. Of 6 wheels, 2 are working well, 1 is dodgy, and 3 have failed. 3 are required to keep orientation.
        mkw5053 4y ago
        I thought they could now control it with only 2 reaction wheels [1] [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10543974.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10543974.pdf
      - gs17 4y ago
        This proposal (by being part of Polaris) is implied to be manned as far as I can tell.
- pkaye 4y ago
  The next space telescope will be the Nancy Grace Roman telescope which is a wide angle telescope so not an exact replacement. https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/ The longer term goal is the Luvoir telescope but its not yet been approved and will probably require significant R&D like JWST. https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/ https://www.luvoirtelescope.org/
  - mlyle 4y ago
    Sure. I'm not talking about the timelines of existing plans for new telescopes. I'm comparing ROI vs: - mission to reboost and service Hubble in various ways - launching a new space telescope mission
    - Sharlin 4y ago
      It takes about fifteen years from concept studies to launch for a Hubble-class space telescope. I guess you could make it in ten if you just chose to replicate Hubble's instruments and if NRO had another spare Keyhole stashed somewhere...
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        The NRO donated two and parts for a third to NASA in 2012. One is apparently being used for the Roman Space Telescope, which would seem to leave another and a primary mirror of a third still unused.
- deleted 4y ago
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- Sharlin 4y ago
  We're going to have another Hubble up in 2027 if all goes well: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, or Roman for short. Originally known as WFIRST, it's a 1.6m-primary-mirror declassified Keyhole spy sat similar to Hubble, but with a shorter focal length and thus a much wider field of view (around 1/4 square degrees, roughly the area of a full moon). Still, its angular resolution will be comparable to Hubble thanks to a much higher-resolution, 300 megapixel imager. It's a visible/near IR instrument, so won't replace Hubble's near UV capabilities. Also, Roman won't have a traditional spectrograph on board. What it will have, however, is a novel coronagraphic instrument for imaging and spectrography of companions of nearby stars (brown dwarfs and gas giants in wide orbits -- still no imaging exo-Earths or even exo-Jupiters, alas). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc... https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html
  - causi 4y ago
    Why do they call it an infrared telescope when it doesn't see in the infrared spectrum?
    - Sharlin 4y ago
      It does in near IR, but yeah, it’s as much a visible light telescope as an IR one.
    - Someone 4y ago
      It sees the near infrared. I expect they got that for free from the camera sensor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_cameras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography#Digital_c...: “Digital camera sensors are inherently sensitive to infrared light, which would interfere with the normal photography by confusing the autofocus calculations or softening the image (because infrared light is focused differently from visible light), or oversaturating the red channel. Also, some clothing is transparent in the infrared, leading to unintended (at least to the manufacturer) uses of video cameras”
- jjk166 4y ago
  A new hubble-scale space telescope is a multibillion dollar project - Hubble cost about $7 billion in 2022 dollars at the time of launch, JWST cost $10 billion. By comparison, a manned servicing mission would likely cost in the mid hundreds of millions, or about 1-10% of the cost of a new telescope. It's unlikely that a one time injection of cash would buy much additional functionality for future satellites. By comparison, buying an extra few years before you need a proper replacement satellite would allow you to build a substantially better telescope at the same annual funding rate, or build the same telescope at a lower annual funding rate.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Things only cost that much per unit because they are one-offs. The trick to saving pots of money is to build duplicates, which will not incur research, design, tooling, test rig, etc., costs.
    - WWLink 4y ago
      The other problem with these is the big super high quality optical mirrors. Going to a production line with those would be really interesting! I don't think you'd get a big enough economy of scale to mass produce them in a just-in-time pipeline though.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        Once you've designed and built the grinding machine (I saw a picture of it, it fills a special room) you've done most of it. Same for the custom test rig. SpaceX shows what happens to costs when you re-use designs and tooling.
    - zopa 4y ago
      True but there's also decreasing marginal utility for each duplicate. A second telescope in any given class would be awesome but it's always going to be less groundbreaking and useful than the first one.
jcims 4y ago
I'd love to see an xprize kind of award for design of a disposable, flat pack 1m space telescope. Get the unit costs down to <$1m (ground-based 1m scopes are $500k) and put 100 of them up into orbit and make time available for very low cost. As this is operationalized you could incrementally increase the capability and specialty with each release.
- kranke155 4y ago
  What would you be looking for exactly tho? What are the advantages - what could be studied in this way? One million dollars is really low for space ready equipment no?
  - m463 4y ago
    a bunch of them together might be "crowdsourced" weather satellites.
  - _joel 4y ago
    Generally, not for cubesats though, but irrelevant to disposable mirrors
  - jcims 4y ago
    Access. I spent about 100 hours on a shitty 11" Celestron last year learning all sorts of things about space and optics and image processing. I'm hooked even though the results are terrible. I can rent time on some big scopes in high places, but the results are still subject to all of the artifacts and attenuation of the atmosphere. Putting up a large number of reasonably capable space telescopes could be a tremendous boon to space education and even science. Look at atmospheric transmittance charts, there are entire areas of the spectrum that we can't even see from the ground. Having all of that research piled up behind billion dollar hardware pipelines doesn't foster a lot of attention or momentum.
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - 4y ago
oldgradstudent 4y ago
> It's amazing to see a 32 year old chunk of hardware remain active and useful to this day. And projected to remain functioning for another 15 years. With only a few billion dollars spent on maintenance, including five space shuttle servicing missions.
- themitigating 4y ago
  So what? Scientific exploration costs money and I'm happy for my tax dollars to pay for this
- WalterBright 4y ago
  My stereo plays all day every day for over 40 years now :-)
  - WWLink 4y ago
    Your stereo's electronics are also pretty well protected against radiation. That radiation has a habit of frying electronics (even rad hard ones) after a while.
baq 4y ago
What’s more amazing is that the NRO has multiple more capable telescopes in orbit as we speak and we’re celebrating that NASA doesn’t have to spend money to keep that old piece of hardware useful for a few more years. Which isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but it just feels odd that priorities are shifted so much towards black projects.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  There are also two "Stubby Hubble" chassis sitting in storage because they're so obsolete that the NRO just donated them. However there is no budget to actually be able to use them. If the famously secretive[1] NRO can just donate that, imagine how far ahead their newer stuff is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O... [1]: founded in 1960, but only officially acknowledged in 1973 and then by accident.
  - 51Cards 4y ago
    I think one of those is currently being turned into the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, though I haven't heard about progress in awhile.
    - contact9879 4y ago
      It's been renamed to the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope scheduled to launch May 2027. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      Well colour me updated! That's nice to hear.
  - rdhatt 4y ago
    ... imagine how far ahead their newer stuff is. Trump gave the whole world a good idea how far ahead the newer stuff is when he tweeted an image from an NRO satellite. Estimated at ~10cm/pixel resolution. Scott Manley published a great break down: https://youtu.be/JRLVFn9z0Gc https://youtu.be/JRLVFn9z0Gc
cronix 4y ago
Voyager is still going after about 46 years and about 14.7 billion miles from earth (and counting). https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
moffkalast 4y ago
Honestly Webb is way overhyped for what it is. Almost 8 times the mirror area of Hubble, three decades more advanced cameras, placed so far beyond any possible interference and it makes images that are at best twice as good and roughly at the same magnification. That photo of Jupiter was pretty disappointing in comparison. With only limited yaw control and no articulation of any kind I was frankly surprised that it was able to see DART at all.
- jorgesborges 4y ago
  The point of the Webb telescope isn’t to take pictures! It’s to collect data. It can “see” way further into the early universe by examining infrared light, which Hubble cannot do.
- cookingrobot 4y ago
  My understanding: what’s great about Webb is that it can take pictures in the infrared. It has to be really cold to do this, hence the big complicated heat shield. Infrared let’s us see things that are further away, because when something’s really far away it gets red-shifted down out of the visible spectrum into the infrared (due to expansion of the universe). So it’s not really any better at imaging things that are close / in the visible spectrum like Jupiter.
- dmix 4y ago
  I just assumed the general public isn't the main user of Webb. I figured infrared is more interesting to scientists than me. Why else would they have chosen that? Maybe they'll figure out a way to translate the colours better for consumption.
- eatsyourtacos 4y ago
  They didn't create Webb to put better pictures as your desktop background. Saying it's "overhyped" because you don't understand what it's for is just peak internet, isn't it.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    The media hyping people up for pictures of a scientific data collector that doesn't mean anything to most people is probably the definition of overhyped.

_joel 4y ago

It's great Jared and the team at Polaris can help extend it, I hope Starship or similar will capture it and bring it back to earth, it deserves to be in a museum not end in a fireball

mnw21cam 4y ago

It's great to see plans to boost the orbit, but I'm thinking it's going to need some maintenance as well fairly soon.

Me1000 4y ago
In the NASA announcement last week they said the studies theyre doing include various kinds of servicing of Hubble, not just boosting it.
- nekoashide 4y ago
  It was a big deal last time and it will be an even bigger deal this time. I'm not sure they had planned for another service mission so who knows if they still have replacement gyros and hardware for it now. Hubble is a bit old though and space is not very friendly, it seems like a risky mission but I guess the cost to service it today is cheaper than making a new one.

dougmwne 4y ago

Could Hubble be feasibly operational past 2037 without maintenance? Would this just be a boost mission or repair also?

yellowapple 4y ago
I'm wondering the same thing. Last servicing was in 2009; poor thing is long overdue for some TLC.
Me1000 4y ago
NASA said in their announcement that the explorations they're doing include the feasibility of various kinds of servicing, not just boosting.
bell-cot 4y ago
Given Hubble's gyroscope failure problem - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Gyroscope_rotation_sensors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Gyrosco... - I would not count on it lasting long enough for Jared & Co. to get there. (My impression was that gyroscope replacement was a "dedicated space shuttle flight and multiple EVA's" sort of job - likely a big reach for SpaceX / Dragon / Polaris, which have flown zero EVA missions so far.) Edit: Sounds like the gyroscopes lasting long enough for Jared & Co. to get there is pretty sure. But depending on the design service life of the still-working gyro's - and a load of other critical items - 2037 is still a huge ask.
- mkw5053 4y ago
  Hubble can operate with down to 1 gyro [1]; however, the viewable regions of the sky are limited. [1] https://esahubble.org/about/general/gyroscopes/ https://esahubble.org/about/general/gyroscopes/
- HALtheWise 4y ago
  It should be possible to "fix" the gyroscopes by simply mounting a unit to the docking port or somewhere else on the exterior that contains a brand new gyroscope system, without needing to remove any of the existing broken gyros. It's probably necessary to make some electrical connections, but I guess it could even be possible for the strap-on gyros to have their own power electronics if that makes things easier.

jacobriis 4y ago

"Without a boost, the thrusterless telescope is expected to re-enter and burn up around 2037" If the government pays for this, hopefully they wait for the cost to orbit to fall after Starship is operational. Seemingly there's no hurry.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
It’s only $67M for a Falcon 9 launch. NASA’s 2022 budget is $24B. Boost while you’ve got the political will, don’t pinch pennies and possibly miss the window to do so. Future expected ongoing science value is likely higher than the F9-Starship cost delta.
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  It's about opportunity cost though. Is there another $67M mission we're losing?
  - kranke155 4y ago
    I think OP is saying (and I agree) opportunity cost in space budgeting is more political and not economical.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > It’s only $67M for a Falcon 9 launch. You're under costing it. A Crew Dragon mission is ~$287 million. That number is probably high because government orgs tend to have additional costs associated with launching for them above and beyond a typical commercial mission. But certainly much higher than $67 million. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-awards-spacex-more-crew-flights-to-space-station https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-awards-spacex-more-crew-fl...
  - 4y ago

1970-01-01 4y ago

Ship it to L2, so you can service both telescopes with one mission.

Denvercoder9 4y ago
This doesn't make any sense. L2 is 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth (4 times the distance to the moon!), while Hubble currently orbits at about 540 km. Moving it to L2 will make it much, much harder to service. Once we have technology to do servicing missions at L2, doing another one in LEO will be child's play.
- 1970-01-01 4y ago
  If this is the very last service mission, pushing Hubble to L2 does make sense. More reboost missions will cost more than its current value. But if you just happen to have a Webb refuel mission in the two decades, you can add-on a Hubble service mission with very low cost and extend its value one more time.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    Space is big. Just because both are in L2 doesn't mean they will be close.
    - 1970-01-01 4y ago
      It's a configurable setting
    - baq 4y ago
      It’s also not that expensive to change planes that far out so being close isn’t a big requirement
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      When you have months to scoot between them, they might as well be a hundred feet apart.
4y ago

jagger27 4y ago

We could have another dozen Hubble clones in orbit and they'd still be booked solid for years. It's just such a fantastic piece of kit, decades later. I see the value in servicing it, but I'd be even happier to see a few Falcon Heavy launches with modern versions of Hubble. In my opinion it's the least SpaceX could do for the brutal damage to the night sky Starlink has done.

thinkcontext 4y ago
Has anyone ballparked what a modern Hubble would cost to build?
- CommieBobDole 4y ago
  The National Reconnaissance Office gave NASA a couple of unused KH-11s back in 2012, which is what Hubble is based on in the first place. They're using one of them for WFIRST, which is apparently expected to cost ~$4 billion, but that's the whole project cost including 5 years of operations.
  - thinkcontext 4y ago
    Thanks. I see its also going to be in L2, that must raise costs considerably.
Maursault 4y ago
> We could have another dozen Hubble clones in orbit We probably do already, they're just pointed in the wrong direction and unavailable for scheduling.
- coolspot 4y ago
  They are available for scheduling, just not to astronomers.

foxyv 4y ago

If the fairing was just a little bit longer on the Falcon 9 it could easily launch another one of these. But the dang thing cost $4.3 billion just to build and launch so I can see why they would want to repair instead of re-build. Especially since Dragon is so freaking cheap compared to the shuttle. However, outfitting Dragon for EVA would be a freaking PITA considering the certification process. More likely they would have to launch an EVA module separately that Dragon would dock to that had the necessary airlock to remove the need to depressurize Dragon. I could see them designing a cheaper less dear version of Hubble now that launch costs are so much lower. But repairing it definitely makes a lot of sense.

_joel 4y ago
Polaris are doing an EVA mission next year on dragon. There will be mods but essentially they're tethered by an umbilical and they'll depressurise the entire vessel
- foxyv 4y ago
  That's awesome! Edit: So they would have existing art to work off of for a Hubble mission. Neat!
  - _joel 4y ago
    First private citizen spacewalk!
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  thats sounds like the dragon is significantly inferiour to the shittle when it comes to EVA
  - foxyv 4y ago
    Yes, Dragon was intended to carry people to ISS. Shuttle was designed for EVA from the start.

zeristor 4y ago

One key thing is that they realised how to fix the gyroscopes which kept failing, with the new design gyroscopes it can keep pointing, replacing those would require a crew.

mabbo 4y ago

The holy grail here is to figure out a way to not just boost it, but start doing some part replacement work on Hubble. There's wonky computers, gyroscopes, and likely other parts that just need a swap out. Hubble is designed to let people do this. The only problem is that doing it today requires a person in a very bulky space suit that won't fit through the Dragon's door. Perhaps a robot?

ghufran_syed 4y ago
The polaris dawn mission is planned to use starship, and will aim to do the first private EVA. And the hubble boost mission would also use starship. So it’s definitely a possibility!
- ghufran_syed 4y ago
  although now I think about it, if starship works, they could capture hubble, return it to earth, fix it and then relaunch it
  - baq 4y ago
    No point coming back home to fix it; better launch a brand new one as everything inside would be replaced anyway
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > The polaris dawn mission is planned to use starship, and will aim to do the first private EVA. And the hubble boost mission would also use starship. So it’s definitely a possibility! I think you're a bit confused. Polaris Dawn is the 1st of 3 missions, and it will be using a Crew Dragon capsule. The Hubble boost mission is the 2nd mission; I suppose it's possible that it could be using Starship, but there's no word so far that it's likely. Currently, the 2nd mission is planning on using Crew Dragon and docking to Hubble with a device located in the trunk. It's the 3rd mission that's planned to use Starship. https://polarisprogram.com/ https://polarisprogram.com/
  - 4y ago

geocrasher 4y ago

As usual, Scott Manley did an excellent analysis of the possibilities and the challenges: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXarNOCMV3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXarNOCMV3c

alberth 4y ago

I wonder if this is the equivalent of me having some 40 year old Nikon camera lenses. Lenses are still great, sharp and clear. But I’ve updated the camera sensors, housing etc over the years - all while still using the same decades old lenses.

m463 4y ago
It took a while for me to discover that truth about DSLR (SLR) lenses. My attention was always on the camera and lenses weren't that interesting. Turns out the lenses last and the camera bodies are soon obsolete. There are some exceptional they-don't-build-them-like-they-used-to lenses, like the canon 50mm f1.0 Of course with mirrorless you can use old lenses with a spacer, but now canon for instance is coming out with both r-mount and tiny m-mount lenses and you can gradually buy your collection over again. (and there are still interesting things going on like the rf 85mm f1.2 normal and now DS model)
- walrus01 4y ago
  One of the big differences, however, with modern lenses is active image stabilization. Various "IS" and "VR" things in Nikon and Canon and similar lenses. Very important if shooting handheld and you want to take shots at slightly lower ISOs with less graininess in low light conditions, and for handheld videography with the same lenses. The active stabilization many modern DSLR and mirrorless market lenses is worth a few f-stops difference.