[HN Gopher] SpaceX exploring mission to boost Hubble
___________________________________________________________________
SpaceX exploring mission to boost Hubble
Author : tectonic
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-10-05 16:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (orbitalindex.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (orbitalindex.com)
| jacobriis wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 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-
| fl...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| What is a reasonable adder to enable the ability to
| automatically dock and boost Hubble with a second stage
| using a stock first stage F9?
| nordsieck wrote:
| > What is a reasonable adder to enable the ability to
| automatically dock and boost Hubble with a second stage
| using a stock first stage F9?
|
| Not really sure.
|
| But honestly, it needs a crewed mission. There's not much
| point to raising Hubble's orbit without replacing the
| reaction control wheels. And that'd basically require an
| EVA.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's about opportunity cost though. Is there another $67M
| mission we're losing?
| kranke155 wrote:
| I think OP is saying (and I agree) opportunity cost in
| space budgeting is more political and not economical.
| [deleted]
| Laremere wrote:
| The whole idea of this is that the government won't pay for it.
| Jared Isaacman has already done one space tourism trip on the
| dragon capsule, and has ordered 2 more dragon missions, and one
| starship mission. It seems he wants to be more than a
| Billionaire flying in space, and have a real impact. The next
| dragon flight is planning on being the first civilian
| spacewalk, the Hubble mission would be a successor with a
| likely spacewalk doing repairs/part replacement.
|
| The extent to which this will have funding from NASA is likely
| to be limited to time spent by NASA personnel required to
| support the mission, whatever replacement hardware is
| installed, and a good chance of having a NASA astronaut along
| on the mission.
| pkaye wrote:
| The unfunded part is the study. The actual mission would need
| to be bid out. Other companies could do their own study and
| make a bid. But I'm sure Jared Isaacman is eager to get the
| deal and will absorb some of the cost.
| themanmaran wrote:
| 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-
| captur...
| mlyle wrote:
| 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.
| dwheeler wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| The original Hubble servicing mission where apparently more
| expensive than building and launching 3 replacements. Those
| missions where less about cost than actually testing repair
| capabilities and some publicity.
|
| Which may or may not still be relevant.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| _ALL_ shuttle missions were more expensive than launching
| 3 separate expendable missions. (on top of the launch
| costs themselves, the payload had to be 'upgraded' to
| human safety requirements. So things like deployment
| squibs had to be made triple redundant (instead of
| double) _and_ had to be completely disconnected from a
| power source until released from the shuttle bay. (and of
| course, _that_ power connection system had to be triple
| redundant... the complexity fed on itself) and that 's
| before you get to the paperwork and the safety reviews...
| And you had to staff up three launch teams, instead of
| two... you needed a full team at Johnson in addition to
| the Cape and your own site. And the launch teams needed
| to be onsite for the full shuttle mission and rehearsals,
| and jerked around by the incessant shuttle schedule
| slips. The costs just kept piling up. )
| mlyle wrote:
| 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...
| melling wrote:
| Yes, humans are needed until they're not.
|
| Once they're no longer needed the cost of repair drops by
| 100x.
|
| Musk's android seems like a bit of a gimmick but
| hopefully he stirs up enough imagination in people that
| we get a few breakthroughs in robotics.
|
| Then we can explore the entire solar system...build bases
| on Mars and the moons of Jupiter, etc without sending
| humans
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| we can't even get a robot to fix a dishwasher or to sort
| trash. Let alone am orbital telescope
| Nullinker wrote:
| My city removed all plastic recycling bins several years
| ago in favor of using trash sorting robots after
| collecting mixed waste.
|
| The robots could pick sort 70% effectively while the
| population of humans after years of training was stuck at
| 50%. I imagine the efficiency of the robots may even have
| increased a bit since then.
| gojomo wrote:
| Interesting! Which city, and is there a writeup with more
| details?
| melling wrote:
| Yeah, many people think it's impossible until someone
| else does it.
|
| The game of Go wasn't close to being won by a computer
| until DeepMind came along.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/9/11185030/google-
| deepmind-a...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| To be fair, making a robot to fix a specific kind of
| dishwasher whose internal layout is known and where fixes
| involve replacing parts already meant to be replaceable
| is probably a lot easier than one that can fix any
| dishwasher. Same with sorting trash.
|
| The big point here is that this boosting and potentially
| servicing mission isn't being pitched by NASA. It's a
| SpaceX proposal connected to their entirely private
| program to develop EVA capability for Dragon and to
| eventually test Starship's ability to support crews in
| space. Thus for NASA it would likely be cheaper than if
| they were asking for it.
|
| So the reason we likely won't see a robotic servicing of
| Hubble (from this) is that it doesn't have as much
| relevance to SpaceX's goals with Polaris Dawn as just
| docking, orbit raising and maybe crewed servicing does.
| queuebert wrote:
| I can't even get my dishwasher to clean my dishes. This
| is not the future I was promised.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The trick is let your dog lick them clean.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| biological automation is always superior
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| A boost module can semipermanently attach itself and take
| over all the maneuvering functions with its own hardware
| suite.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Ha, found the practical engineer! I didn't think of that.
| Brilliant!
| pkaye wrote:
| On the last Hubble service mission, they added a soft
| capture mechanism. They could attach a boost module to
| that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#/med
| ia/...
| xani_ wrote:
| Or Kerbal Space Program player lmao.
|
| I definitely did that once or twice, just send a small
| craft with some RCS thrusters and reaction wheels then
| attach it to spacecraft via The Claw
| deelowe wrote:
| Do they plan to do more manned missions to Hubble?
| gs17 wrote:
| This proposal (by being part of Polaris) is implied to be
| manned as far as I can tell.
| thaeli wrote:
| It's also proposed to be funded by Isaacman. Reading
| between the lines, he's probably planning to go to space
| personally and fix the Hubble. Which is kinda a vanity
| project at that point, but hey, I'll take it.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Both he and SpaceX seem committed to expanding the
| capabilities of private spaceflight and private
| astronauts. If they are into it, why not?
| mlyle wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I thought they could now control it with only 2 reaction
| wheels [1]
|
| [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/10543974.pdf
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| As other's have commented, NASA has "free" telescopes
| donated to them by the NRO.
| pkaye wrote:
| 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/
|
| 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/
| mlyle wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jjk166 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| zopa wrote:
| 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.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The universe is so big, and so many things to look at, I
| find it hard to believe we couldn't productively use 100
| Hubbles.
| mhh__ wrote:
| 100 Hubble's would be great but 100 Hubble's and nothing
| else would not be
| jjk166 wrote:
| Well if we had built a warehouse full of Hubbles, then
| launching a duplicate would make a lot of sense, but we
| didn't and now the cost of making a replacement after all
| the custom tooling and talent has been lost is just as
| expensive as the first time around.
| WWLink wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kijin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| rlt wrote:
| True for now, but Starship, if full and rapid reusability is
| achieved, will radically change the economics of space
| missions.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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?
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Older telescopes can still contribute to science in
| parallel, too. Even terrestrial telescope time is booked
| years in advance. More scopes means more time for secondary
| pursuits, hands-on time for more junior astronomers,
| observations for more speculative theories, etc.
| mlyle wrote:
| Terrestrial telescopes don't have nearly the degree of
| maintenance costs that a manned servicing mission in
| orbit entails.
|
| If fixing your old terrestrial 0.5m telescope were going
| to cost more than a shiny new PlaneWave 0.5m, you can bet
| that you're going to replace.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Of course, the cost tradeoff is quite different. All I'm
| saying is that a telescope, ground or space, does not
| suddenly become irrelevant because it's not the latest
| and greatest, so the expected value of the Hubble may
| remain positive after newer scopes are launched.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Each new space based platform also is built to see
| different parts of the spectrum. Hubble happens to be
| mainly visible. It is not irrelevant just because JWST is
| now active. To the contrary, they are combining images
| from each platform as a composite because they see
| different things for the same objects.
|
| There would be no purpose of launching a new visible
| spectrum space platform unless it is going to seriously
| dwarf the size of Hubble. Hubble can already be upgraded
| with new sensors, and has. Which is part of the reason
| Hubble remains relevant. Hindsight being 20/20 and all,
| JWST learned from Hubble's need for contact lenses, which
| would be assumed to follow for whatever next is.
| mlyle wrote:
| Because servicing it (beyond reboost) may be the same cost
| as launching something new that offers better performance.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| roywiggins wrote:
| 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...
| Sharlin wrote:
| 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_Telesc.
| ..
|
| https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html
| causi wrote:
| Why do they call it an infrared telescope when it doesn't
| see in the infrared spectrum?
| Someone wrote:
| It sees the near infrared. I expect they got that for
| free from the camera sensor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/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"_
| Sharlin wrote:
| It does in near IR, but yeah, it's as much a visible
| light telescope as an IR one.
| jcims wrote:
| 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.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am pretty uninformed in this space, but would a swarm of
| smaller mirrors configured into a synthetic aperture work to
| make a larger scope? This could leverage mass manufacturing
| techniques to lower cost, be fault tolerant, etc?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_synthesis
| nick478016 wrote:
| For multiple individual telescopes to provide more
| telescope time, yes, but for multiple mirrors to act as one
| in the visible spectrum, it would be extremely difficult as
| they need to be aligned to a fraction of a wavelength.
| Maybe if they are mechanically attached to each other once
| in orbit it could work. See: ESO's Very Large Telescope,
| astronomical interferometers.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| For all practical purposes, the parent comment is
| describing at a gross level the design of the Webb : )
| (not much cost savings in that direction...)
| kranke155 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| a bunch of them together might be "crowdsourced" weather
| satellites.
| _joel wrote:
| Generally, not for cubesats though, but irrelevant to
| disposable mirrors
| jcims wrote:
| 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.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| Access for learning and education isn't going to ever pay
| for engineering and launch costs. Plus, if you're really
| interested in actual science, there's 30 years of Hubble
| images available to work through. Crowd-sourced science
| would be a lot more useful filtering through that back
| catalogue than coming up with anything new to look for
| that's visible by something with much less power than
| Hubble.
| [deleted]
| gojomo wrote:
| Stable Diffusion for amateur space-telescope astronomy.
| the_other wrote:
| Hasn't our recent history argued against "disposable" hard
| enough?
| outworlder wrote:
| When it's millions or billions of items? Sure.
| godelski wrote:
| Disposable on Earth means sitting in a landfill. Disposable
| in space means burning up in the atmosphere. Ironically by
| not using disposable equipment you can end up cluttering
| the space even more because we still need to make advances.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| With current space infrastructure, disposable is the only
| way to go while maintaining progress. As long as the
| hardware is optimized to fully burn up on re-entry it's
| acceptable at current scales.
|
| For example, Starlink can keep unit costs low and focus on
| getting at least some functionality going while
| simultaneously working on next generation satellites. Since
| the satellites are somewhat disposable (expected to have an
| operating life of ~5 years), this approach doesn't lock
| them into a specific generation of satellites.
|
| Eventually, we'll have enough hardware up there that it'll
| start being important to try to refurb/recycle, but that is
| not practical at scale right now, given that we're only
| starting to seriously explore things like mission extension
| vehicles, active debris removal, orbital refueling and
| satellite servicing.
| jcims wrote:
| Depends on the application. Starlink satellites are
| disposable (demisable). Not to say they shouldn't have
| stationkeeping to prolong the mission lifespan, just that
| there's no contingency servicing/maintenance plan if
| something goes wrong. They just return to dust.
| WWLink wrote:
| There's already several companies doing that kinda thing for
| telescopes that point back down at earth. For telescopes that
| point away from earth I don't think anyone wants to do it
| because there's not much $$ in it.
|
| I've seen at least a few startups try similar kinda things
| ("let's launch a constellation of cheap satellites and rent
| time on them out!") and they flopped hard. My favorite tried
| marketing as a "cryptocurrency in space" thing (LMFAO)
| jcims wrote:
| I wanted to do a certificate authority in space that you
| could connect to as it passed overhead and get certs and
| signatures from it.
|
| This wouldn't be a profitable enterprise.
| cronix wrote:
| Voyager is still going after about 46 years and about 14.7
| billion miles from earth (and counting).
|
| https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
| moffkalast wrote:
| 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.
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| _ph_ wrote:
| You have to consider that JWST is working at much longer wave
| lengths than Hubble. So the resolution isn't much better than
| Hubble, if at all. Resolution of an optical instrument is
| limited by diameter over wave length. So despite its much
| larger mirror, it doesn't pull more resolution than hubble.
|
| Where it excels at is, first looking at wave lengths so far
| invisible by any larger telescope. Hubble can't observe at
| those wave lengths and they are virtually invisible from
| earth, as the atmosphere basically absorbs any light at those
| wave lengths.
|
| Also, it has almost 10x as much surface area than Hubble. So
| it will collect vastly more light than Hubble, as can be seen
| by the deep sky pictures available so far, taken in a
| fraction of time compared similar Hubble pictures.
|
| The limited targetting control doesn't matter from a
| scientific perspective. There is a many years long waiting
| list for observations. During a year, the telescope is able
| to hit every spot on the sky, so the observations are just
| done in the order given by the telescope.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ah fair enough, I hadn't considered the wavelength impact
| on resolution. That makes at least some sense.
|
| > Hubble can't observe at those wave lengths and they are
| virtually invisible from earth
|
| _coughs in Spitzer_
|
| > The limited targetting control doesn't matter from a
| scientific perspective.
|
| I would argue that it does matter in the case of specific
| events like the DART impact. Having it in its field of view
| was either extensive planning or dumb luck. I really don't
| see how it was too complicated to add one pitch servo, hell
| having a full robotic arm is even planned for LUVIOR.
| jorgesborges wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Thaxll wrote:
| SOLID engineering.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| So what? Scientific exploration costs money and I'm happy for
| my tax dollars to pay for this
| WalterBright wrote:
| My stereo plays all day every day for over 40 years now :-)
| WWLink wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| est31 wrote:
| > we're celebrating that NASA doesn't have to spend money to
| keep that old piece of hardware useful for a few more years.
|
| I'm _pretty_ sure that SpaceX is being paid for this. They
| are not a charity but a for-profit company.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Jared Isaacman offered to pay for the mission, depending on
| if it's feasible.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > 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
|
| I have zero problem with the NRO's budget or its existence
| and mission statement, undoubtedly its data products are
| proving extremely helpful right now in a behind-the-scenes
| way stopping the Ukrainians from being overrun by the Russian
| army. In addition to the well publicized equipment (HIMARs,
| etc) provided by the US and NATO states there is certainly a
| large amount of data on russian armor movements, ammo dump
| locations, logistics depot locations etc being funnelled from
| the US into the Ukrainian military command.
|
| Just because a project or budget is black doesn't necessarily
| mean it's useless or nefarious.
|
| In addition to the above of course NASA should have a much
| higher budget. I would like it if they could spend it on
| things that aren't flying pork barrels like the SLS. If they
| want to launch huge heavy things to orbit, designing
| something in two pieces that can attach together and using
| two fully expendable Falcon Heavy launches right now would be
| a tiny fraction of the cost. Not even counting the
| _theoretical_ capability of Starship.
| [deleted]
| worried4future wrote:
| > Just because a project or budget is black doesn't
| necessarily mean it's useless or nefarious.
|
| Of course not, it does mean that we don't have the ability
| to know if it is useless or nefarious or not.
| walrus01 wrote:
| _Theoretically_ the idea is you 're supposed to elect
| trustworthy people with good judgment to the positions
| that sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and other
| persons in the US government who approve the budgets of
| TS/SCI and similar programs....
|
| In reality maybe this doesn't work so well.
| dmix wrote:
| Something like the Church committee would be nice every
| decade or so.
|
| Snowden showed they desperately need some light to shine
| on them once in a while.
|
| Otherwise intelligence agencies have a historically
| consistent tendency to get a little too laissez faire
| with people's right.
|
| NRO is probably the most secretive of all of them, but
| I'm assuming looking at pictures of Russian tanks and
| Chinese missile silos all day isn't the most civil-rights
| threatening thing vs storing billions of peoples emails,
| text messages, and phone calls like the NSA.
| cfraenkel wrote:
| False, though common, misunderstanding of
| responsibilities. The NRO is the operator/owner of the
| space asset. The NSA is (one of) the customer getting
| data from the NRO space asset. (along with many other
| sources)
| walrus01 wrote:
| Though I would bet good money that a vastly greater
| percentage of what the NSA does for traffic interception,
| storage and analysis is related to terrestrial based
| networks (or terrestrial-to-local wireless like LTE)
| rather than space based, these days.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| 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_O.
| ..
|
| [1]: founded in 1960, but only officially acknowledged in
| 1973 and then by accident.
| rdhatt wrote:
| ... _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
| 51Cards wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's been renamed to the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope
| scheduled to launch May 2027.
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_T
| elesc...
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Well colour me updated! That's nice to hear.
| kabdib wrote:
| Go read _The Hubble Wars_.
|
| It will make you angry. Aside from the mirror fault, there
| were a number of operational issues that Hubble ran into that
| the TLAs _knew_ about (e.g., solar panel flapping, radiation
| around the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly resetting
| Hubble 's computers, etc.) . . . and didn't tell anyone
| because of secrecy concerns.
| geocrasher wrote:
| As usual, Scott Manley did an excellent analysis of the
| possibilities and the challenges:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXarNOCMV3c
| _joel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| In the NASA announcement last week they said the studies theyre
| doing include various kinds of servicing of Hubble, not just
| boosting it.
| nekoashide wrote:
| 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.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Ship it to L2, so you can service both telescopes with one
| mission.
| outworlder wrote:
| There's a reason for having the Webb telescope at L2. The
| argument is much weaker for Hubble.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Space is big. Just because both are in L2 doesn't mean they
| will be close.
| baq wrote:
| It's also not that expensive to change planes that far
| out so being close isn't a big requirement
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| When you have months to scoot between them, they might as
| well be a hundred feet apart.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It's a configurable setting
| dougmwne wrote:
| Could Hubble be feasibly operational past 2037 without
| maintenance? Would this just be a boost mission or repair also?
| yellowapple wrote:
| I'm wondering the same thing. Last servicing was in 2009; poor
| thing is long overdue for some TLC.
| Me1000 wrote:
| NASA said in their announcement that the explorations they're
| doing include the feasibility of various kinds of servicing,
| not just boosting.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Given Hubble's gyroscope failure problem -
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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/
| HALtheWise wrote:
| 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.
| zeristor wrote:
| 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.
| jagger27 wrote:
| 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.
| Maursault wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| They are available for scheduling, just not to astronomers.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Has anyone ballparked what a modern Hubble would cost to build?
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thanks. I see its also going to be in L2, that must raise
| costs considerably.
| foxyv wrote:
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| The question then becomes, how much does a portable airlock
| weigh versus a new satellite? What's the value of the airlock
| at the end of the mission? You're in the wrong orbit to send it
| somewhere else, you can't carry it back attached, and if you
| get clever and make an inflatable one to try to keep it small,
| how do you deflate such a thing?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That's OK, we've got two more like it sitting in storage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
| foxyv wrote:
| Neat! However, I wonder if they are fit for purpose still.
| _joel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's awesome! Edit: So they would have existing art to work
| off of for a Hubble mission. Neat!
| _joel wrote:
| First private citizen spacewalk!
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| thats sounds like the dragon is significantly inferiour to
| the shittle when it comes to EVA
| foxyv wrote:
| Yes, Dragon was intended to carry people to ISS. Shuttle
| was designed for EVA from the start.
| _joel wrote:
| Indeed, it's also not $1.5 billion per launch.
| alberth wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mabbo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| although now I think about it, if starship works, they could
| capture hubble, return it to earth, fix it and _then_
| relaunch it
| baq wrote:
| No point coming back home to fix it; better launch a brand
| new one as everything inside would be replaced anyway
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 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/
| cma wrote:
| Doesn't everything have to be designed differently on a space
| robot vs an earth one due to metal cold welding together and
| stuff? Just something I read about with the JWST gearing, maybe
| it only matters for something out there a long time.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 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 you haven't been following, but Polairs Dawn (the 1st
| Polaris mission) will be doing an EVA with a SpaceX designed
| suit. Part of the reason the suit can fit out of the door is
| because it's a tethered suit.
|
| Assuming the tether is long enough, there's no reason in
| principle that someone couldn't use such a suit to work on
| Hubble.
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