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The Future of HubbleHubble was designed for 15 years of operation, and it will end up serving for 22.Now the space agency and the astronomy community have to sit down and figure out what, if anything, should follow the Hubble. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST, formerly known as the Next Generation Space Telescope, NGST) may replace the HST in 2012. However, the JWST is an infrared telescope, while the Hubble covered the range from the near infrared through the visible into the near ultraviolet. What complicates the question are the breathtaking advances in Earth-based astronomy since the Hubble was conceived. During the 1970s when Hubble was designed, the conventional wisdom was that ground based telescopes would never have the resolution of space telescopes because the atmosphere seeing limited the resolution of ground telescopes. In fact, microcomputer technology starting in the 1990s allowed for adaptive optics which adjusts the mirrors continuously to compensate for changes in the atmosphere. This means that there is not any need replace the Hubble to obtain better astronomical imagery in the visible range. The new ground-based telescopes can do the job, and even the most ambitious of them, like the Keck in Hawaii and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, are much less expensive than the Hubble and much more sensitive to light. This naturally is much easier to service and update. For example, the VLT cost was roughly 1/7 of the HST cost, and gave the astronomic community four 8.2 meters telescopes, with a resolution almost as high as the Hubble. The other side of this, of course, is that ground based telescopes are only just now approaching the abilities of a 20 year old 2.4 meter space telescope. Much of the technology developed for these ground telescopes is applicable to new space telescopes. A new space telescope employing these new technologies and other general advancements made in spaceflight over the last 20 years could once again revolutionize astronomy. Space telescopes are needed for wavelengths outside of visible wavelengths. In particular, Hubble was eventually used largely for observations of the near-ultraviolet, a frequency for which no new telescopes are currently planned. On January 29, 2004, NASA's Administrator said that that he would review his decision to cancel the final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope due to public outcry and requests from Congress for NASA to look for a way to save the Hubble Space Telescope. Adm. Hal Gehman, chairman of the NASA board that investigated the Space Shuttle Columbia incident would review and send his opinion to NASA according to a letter sent from NASA Administrator Sean O' Keefe to Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski; Mikulski is the ranking Democrat on the Senate subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget. Websites have been set up dedicated to saving the Hubble Space Telescope. Federal lawmakers noted that NASA's next generation space telescope, named the James Webb Telescope is not scheduled for launch until 2010, many years after the Hubble Space Telescope was originally expected to cease functions. They also noted that about $200 million has already been spent on two new instruments designed for the Hubble Space Telescope and it might cost $300 million for a mission to return the Hubble Space Telescope safely to the Earth. [2] On July 13, 2004, an official panel from the National Academy of Sciences made the recommendation that the Hubble telescope be preserved despite the apparent risks. Their report urged "NASA should take no actions that would preclude a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope." On August 11, 2004, Sean O'Keefe requested the Goddard Space Flight Center to prepare a detailed proposal for a robotic service mission. It is expected that the proposal will take 12 months to produce - any such mission, likely to cost in excess of $1 billion, will not take place before 2007. In early August 2004 NASA announced that MD Robotics of Canada would be the sole bidder for the robot component of the rescue mission, given its experience with Canadarm and the space station's Mobile Servicing System. The last component of the system is the recently completed Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator which is nearly an "off-the-shelf" answer to the requirements of the repair mission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights Armageddon Online
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