The Hubble Lives On

tanman writes "CNN reports that NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has agreed to send astronauts on one final mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. No date was reported for the mission, other than before the shuttle fleet is retired. From the article, 'A rehab mission would keep Hubble working until about 2013. It would add two new camera instruments, upgrade aging batteries and stabilizing equipment, add new guidance sensors and repair a light-separating spectrograph. Without a servicing mission, Hubble will likely deteriorate in 2009 or 2010.'"

Who would have thought that

[porkchop_d_clown]

the Charismatic Megafauna problem would affect NASA?

Since Hubble's replacement is already under construction [nasa.gov], and since ground based scopes like Keck [keckobservatory.org] exceed Hubble's capabilities, what is the benefit of dropping hundreds of millions of dollars repairing it?

Re:A good first step...

[Chris Burke]

This is a good first step, but is it too late? Don't they have a new deep space telescope on the books already?

Yes, but it isn't exactly a replacement for Hubble, it's newer and better tech but also designed for different uses.

I had heard previously that once the gyros were repaired and it had its orbit boosted that Hubble would last until 2020. It would be fantastic to have both HST and JWST operating at the same time. The article says only 2013 (when JWST is theoretically going to be launched), which makes me wonder if they're just sandbagging or if this mission they are planning doesn't include enough repairs to make it last that long. I notice that the article doesn't mention changing Hubble's orbit, so maybe that was scrapped from the mission.

If they need to fix Hubble to bridge the gap then let us get it done.

The correct phrasing is: "Git 'er done!"