[HN Gopher] NASA Made the Hubble Telescope to Be Remade
___________________________________________________________________
NASA Made the Hubble Telescope to Be Remade
Author : wallflower
Score : 90 points
Date : 2024-10-03 11:49 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| lucioperca wrote:
| Nice, but maybe it would have been better to launch a rocket a
| day to keep the cost away.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Hubble weighs 11 tons, well within the capacity to LEO of a
| single $70M reusable Falcon 9 launch (probably around half that
| cost for SpaceX).
|
| I wonder how expensive a telescope like this would be today, both
| the design and actual manufacturing, and whether it would be
| feasible for SpaceX to shut up all the "Starlink satellites are
| blocking my view of the sky" complaints by launching a Hubble-
| equivalent space telescope (not more capable, just more modern
| and presumably much cheaper) and then giving out observation time
| on it.
|
| Of course, it would not be easily maintainable given we no longer
| have the space shuttle, but if the majority of the cost was
| development, the manufacturing + launch costs today might make
| replacement cheaper than on-orbit repairs.
|
| https://www.space.com/15892-hubble-space-telescope.html claims
| "Getting Hubble developed and launched cost $1.5 billion".
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| It's not just people trying to use telescopes to do science,
| it's also people like me trying to do astrophotography. Time on
| a LEO telescope, while cool, would not help my photography.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| As an astrophotographer myself, Starlink has caused me 0
| issues. I'm not sure if that's what you're trying to imply.
| Airplanes are the biggest issue but are easily edited out.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Now that we don't have the Space Shuttle maintenance would be
| trivial. There would be no more involvement of the manned space
| flight division of NASA at all. The telescope designers would
| just need to launch something that actually worked, since there
| is no longer a need to justify a manned spaceflight program.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's a lot of limitations with an on orbit satellite you
| don't run into with ground based systems. Hubble is pretty old
| and it's mirror pretty small at this point so there are hard
| limits on it's usefulness for viewing very faint objects, it's
| mirror simply doesn't gather as much light because it's
| relatively small at just under 8 feet. Another thing you can't
| do anywhere nearly as easily are upgrades or adding new
| experiments. With ground based telescopes it's relatively easy
| to add new experiments on the side mirror to measure new
| spectra or measure in a different way. That just can't be done
| with a space based telescope, even if the design allowed for it
| the costs sky rocket.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It doesn't gather as much light as ground based telescopes,
| but the background (for example, from airglow) is also much
| lower, so the SNR is pretty good.
| bane wrote:
| I've written here before with some back of the envelope numbers
| for a hubble 2.0 + starship as the LV. It gets more interesting
| if you set up an assembly line for cameras in a tube like the
| hubble to spread the costs out, and use newer guts for the
| sensor payloads and on board compute. Make some assumptions
| about the telescopes, such as being okay to fail since we have
| so many up tWebb. You could even do experiments in
| computational photography like the Keck or the VLA to overcome
| the light collection limits of the mirror size. I forget the
| numbers I came up with but it's a lot of orbital sensors for
| the cost of one hubble program and like an entire space station
| with sensors for the James webb.
| tjoff wrote:
| Reminded me of this, not sure if anything came out of it.
|
| _US military gives NASA two better-than-Hubble telescopes
| (2012)_ :
| https://www.theregister.com/2012/06/05/military_gives_telesc...
| ianburrell wrote:
| We know how much new Hubble would cost. The Roman telescope is
| based on donated donated spy satellite of similar size and
| design. It will cost estimated $3.2 billion and that doesn't
| include the mirror and structure.
|
| New Hubble telescope wouldn't solve the Starlink problem. There
| are lots of smaller ground telescopes that have view blocked.
| We would need to launch a bunch of smaller, like 1m ones, to
| compensate. Also, there are a lot of larger telescopes that are
| only feasible on Earth. Good example is the 8.4m Rubin survey
| telescope which is only going to cost $700 million but would be
| lots of billions in space. That might fit in Starship but the
| Extremely Large Telescope won't.
| nativeit wrote:
| I'd rather just de-orbit every StarLink satellite, stick next
| gen data satellites in geostationary orbits, and outlaw more
| any more space trash at that scale in LEO, full-stop.
| fencepost wrote:
| Latency's not going to stop being a problem for geostationary
| orbits, which is why lower altitudes get used.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It's a good thing we don't have even more ignorant tyrants in
| power then
| nativeit wrote:
| Well, the smart tyrants are certainly making productive use
| of StarLink, to be sure.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I'd rather just de-orbit every StarLink satellite, stick
| next gen data satellites in geostationary orbits, and outlaw
| more any more space trash at that scale in LEO, full-stop.
|
| Flip side is that stuff in LEO deorbits pretty quicky, while
| geostationary junk doesn't deorbit in any timeframes humans
| care about.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > shut up all the "Starlink satellites are blocking my view of
| the sky" complaints
|
| These complaints make a lot more sense when you project forward
| by just a few decades. We're talking about _one_ provider
| already causing minor hassles. What do you think an entire
| commercialized segment is going to do?
|
| Maybe we can shut up all the "LEO satellites are the best way
| to build a communications network" people by building out a
| reasonable and fair network on the surface of the earth first.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| A democratic space telescope could be an interesting
| experiment. Imagine if paying $5/month got you access to all
| the telescope's observations, and also the ability to vote on
| where it points next.
| xattt wrote:
| NASA didn't design for serviceability, but rather the NRO.
|
| There's an old photo showing a Hubble mirror being ground by a
| technician in 1979. It's a cute how-the-sausage-is-made photo,
| until you think about the timelines when Hubble was donated and
| realize it's a photo of top secret work being done.
|
| (1)
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_mirror_polishing...
| Zarkonnen wrote:
| Quite, let's not bury the fact that the HST is a modified KH-11
| spy satellite aimed the other way.
| lizknope wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
|
| We don't know how much of it is the same but the mirror is
| very similar.
|
| > KH-11s are believed to resemble the Hubble Space Telescope
| in size and shape, as they were shipped in similar
| containers. Their length is believed to be 19.5 meters, with
| a diameter of up to 3 meters (120 in).[5][23] A NASA history
| of the Hubble,[24] in discussing the reasons for switching
| from a 3-meter main mirror to a 2.4-meter (94 in) design,
| states: "In addition, changing to a 2.4-meter mirror would
| lessen fabrication costs by using manufacturing technologies
| developed for military spy satellites".
|
| > In January 2011, NRO donated to NASA two space Optical
| Telescope Assemblies with 2.4 meters (94 in) diameter primary
| mirrors,[53][54][55][56] similar in size to the Hubble Space
| Telescope, yet with steerable secondary mirrors and shorter
| focal length (resulting in a wider field of view). These were
| initially believed to be KH-11 series "extra hardware", but
| were later attributed to the cancelled Future Imaging
| Architecture program.[57] The mirrors are to be used by NASA
| as the primary and spare for the Roman Space Telescope.
| _djo_ wrote:
| That's not accurate. You're thinking of the Nancy Grace Roman
| Space Telescope [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissanc
| e_O...
| chankstein38 wrote:
| As someone who doesn't have a lot of knowledge here, I
| appreciate your corrections and sources!
| akira2501 wrote:
| And the shuttle was designed to launch and recover DoD
| payloads. There's a lot of "military synergy" in the early
| space program. No one else was interested in paying.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It is not that simple. Hubble was developed in the open by
| nasa civil servants who did not have access to KH-11 design.
| The non-optical systems are entirely different between the
| two platforms. Some of the contractors were shared however,
| and may or may not have reused IP and tooling. A lot of it is
| convergent evolution though. The size of the space shuttle
| payload bay was set by the DOD to be large enough to carry or
| return a KH 11 spy satellite, even though it was never used
| for that purpose AFAIK. The size of the Hubble was obviously
| the max size they could fit in the space shuttle. So they
| both ended up being identically sized optical telescopes, and
| it's not surprising that similar design requirements end up
| making similar devices.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| My grandfather worked on some aspect of the Hubble design
| (I was young; I think the timing would have put him at
| Lockheed M&S in Sunnyvale at that time). He never said
| anything about his work on it being classified. He used to
| say "when I retired, the stack of NDAs was this tall" and
| show his index finger and thumb being about 3 inches apart.
|
| He was a very serious guy and would never talk about
| anything he shouldn't have. So yes, I believe the fact that
| he was willing to talk about Hubble meant it was done in
| the open. And also, he never expressed any sort of
| amazement that it was still up there, working. Why wouldn't
| it be?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Hubble was done in the open, this is an established fact.
| Since some of the contractors companies were the same,
| though usually not the same employees, it's an open
| question we plebs may never know as to whether some
| aspects of KH-11 were declassified and shared with the
| workers doing Hubble.
|
| But if we're talking anecdotes, I worked at Lockheed as
| well, though not back then, and one of the stories I
| heard was that when the Hubble was in Sunnyvale to get
| tested in the vacuum chamber, one of the KH-11 workers
| stopped by to check it out. He spotted something that was
| a unique invention for the KH spy satellites and alerted
| the government. It took a LOT of paperwork to show that
| nope, it was just accidental convergent design. It was a
| tricky thing to sort out, but really the only way of
| solving that problem given the identical requirements.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > usually not the same employees, it's an open question
| we plebs may never know
|
| The impression was that my grandfather did classified
| work more often than not; he probably would have been one
| of the crossovers if it had been the case. He was
| exceptionally severe if any discussion came too close to
| whatever line existed, not that anyone else knew if or
| where such a line was. My mother and her siblings did not
| find it to be a very happy childhood, on the subject of
| anecdotes :). The stuff he talked about was fascinating,
| but you learned quickly not to ask many questions.
| _djo_ wrote:
| You're confusing two different programmes.
|
| Hubble was a programme dating back to the 1960s as the Large
| Space Telescope (LST)[0], but first given the full go ahead in
| 1978. It was designed and developed in the open, with the
| Marshall Space Flight Center as the main design location.
|
| The donated NRO satellites were the two donated in 2012[1] and
| were reportedly KH-11s. Only one of those is being developed
| into a space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
| [2]
|
| [0] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/overview/the-
| history...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It's also worth adding that the Hubble mirror was made by
| Perkin-Elmer with a backup made by Kodak. The Kodak mirror is
| the one with "heritage".
| _djo_ wrote:
| Technically both Perkin-Elmer and Kodak had heritage, as
| Perkin-Elmer had made mirrors for the KH-9, but Kodak was
| making the KH-11 mirrors.
|
| NASA initially considered a 3m main mirror for the HST, but
| opted for a 2.4m mirror especially to take advantage of the
| existing industrial base for 2.4m mirrors for the KH-11. As
| it was a proven industrial process that derisked the
| project and reduced cost compared to a 3m mirror.
| adastra22 wrote:
| And ironically was the part that failed.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Producing these large mirrors is a very specialized
| industry, the projects are extremely expensive, and the
| timelines are long. Things tend to get passed around
| between programs, sometimes for reasons as simple as a
| mirror having been completed after its original customer
| cancelled it. So it's hard to establish direct causality
| sometimes, especially since some of the "synergy" between
| projects was leveraged by the contractors to complete
| similar tasks without necessarily having direct
| interaction between the parent projects.
|
| It's sort of like air surveillance radar. There's only a
| few companies that make them, the clients are civilian or
| military, but the economics mean that both the vendors
| and customers are incentivized to align the civilian and
| military systems as much as possible (including through
| shared-use agreements) in order to make the design and
| purchasing more economical. Thus the civilian designs are
| all modifications of the military designs and the
| military designs are all modifications of the civilian
| designs, they have essentially evolved in parallel.
|
| I used to work on the MRO 2.4 meter telescope (at a small
| university observatory). Its main mirror was a Hubble
| design competition prototype that was transferred to the
| Air Force for intelligence use after the design wasn't
| selected. The Air Force kept it in storage for a long
| time and then provided it as part of their incentives to
| build the 2.4 meter with dual scientific and military
| applications. A lot of large mirrors used in astronomy
| and intelligence have stories like this. There's a number
| of 2.4 meter mirrors out there and pretty much all of
| them were made for either Hubble, KH-11, or as a shot at
| both.
|
| Radio astronomy is no exception, there's a reason I bring
| up radar. Most radio astronomy observatories early on
| incorporated microwave electronics that were designed for
| weapons targeting radar---sometimes extremely directly,
| with military radar prototypes having been "looted for
| parts" by the astronomy commmunity after they were
| retired. Microwave electronics were very costly to design
| at the time and it saved everyone a lot of money to reuse
| everything.
| _djo_ wrote:
| That's really interesting information, thanks for sharing
| it.
|
| And yes, the Hubble official history makes it clear that
| NASA intentionally sought to reuse industrial capacity
| and tooling developed for the NRO's surveillance
| satellite programme.
|
| My point was only that the Hubble was not a donated
| KH-11, not that it didn't share the same industrial base
| as the NRO's satellites.
| treyd wrote:
| I have a theory that the reason they screwed up the optics
| initially was because they had to adapt the design from the spy
| satellite design.
| downrightmike wrote:
| No, the identically made mirror that kodak made in parallel
| was perfectly fine. the first mirror's manufacturer made a
| mistake
| reneherse wrote:
| Indeed the institutional/industrial context of that photo is
| extremely intriguing and the stories I've heard could fill the
| pages of a Tom Clancy novel.
|
| The level of secrecy at the facility was so rigorous and taken
| so much to heart that even years after various NRO programs
| were declassified (decades after program conclusion), the
| retired civilian personnel I've had the privilege to know were
| reluctant to speak openly.
|
| I will see if I can persuade one retired engineer I know to
| join this discussion!
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This reminds me again of the tremendous opportunity of making a
| spacesuit with a five finger articulated 'hand' at the end of the
| sleeve. Imagine an astronaut who puts their hand into a
| controller at the end of the sleeve that wraps around their
| fingers and hand such that their hand movements are exactly
| replicated on the robotic 'hand' outside the end of the glove.
| This would revolutionize what could be done on spacewalks.
|
| At one of the NASA tech days at NASA Ames (Moffet field), they
| had a space suit glove simulator where you put your hand in it
| and it had the flexibility that you would expect with a partial
| pressure spacesuit glove in vacuum. It was super hard to do
| anything precisely when pushing so hard just to move your fingers
| around. A robotic 'waldo' type device which replicated your hand
| movement precisely would minimize hand fatigue and allow for
| doing precise alignment.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Why not just use your hand through flexible gloves, like in the
| old days?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-07 23:01 UTC)