The Hubble Space Telescope could get an new repair mission.

[tater]

Yeah, a plane change alone on Hubble would be ridiculous. 

[kerbiloid]

They all should better have a transorbital tug on the ISS to deliver patients to the doctor rather than this.

[Eklykti]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

They all should better have a transorbital tug on the ISS to deliver patients to the doctor rather than this.

The inclination is wrong for that

Also, there's another plan to use Dragon for repair mission. It has the unpressurized trunk, but would need either some kind of airlock or depressurize the entire capsule for EVA, and some kind of manipulator (possibly could be brought up in the trunk and just left there afterwards)

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Eklykti said:

The inclination is wrong for that

The inclination is better to launch 25-t Orion or 105-t Shuttle to it?

1 hour ago, Eklykti said:

to use Dragon for repair mission

If it once flies crewed.

[Nibb31]

19 hours ago, insert_name said:

Wonder if the tech developed for this would be usable in manned servicing missions to other satilites, and if so which ones. Probably not gso, any idea about SSO and other polar orbits

Servicing a satellite on orbit requires a satellite to be designed to be serviced on orbit. In the case of Hubble, it was equipped with hatches, handrails, modular components, grappling fixtures, and later equipped with a docking port.

A normal satellite has its hardware wrapped under layers of insulation that would be a mess to cut through and repair, cables and fluid pipes that are not designed to be unplugged or removed with heavy gloves, protruding bits, potentially explosive tanks, and thrusters that would be a hazard for someone in a spacesuit, no way to grapple or stabilize the satellite without damaging it, and so on...  There is no universal tech for servicing satellites that weren't designed to be serviced.

Edited February 17, 2017 by Nibb31

[YNM]

13 hours ago, SgtSomeone said:

I was really hoping you would suggest servicing Hubble by flying and docking ISS to it...

Still seems more realistic.

Well, you do know matching orbital plane is a PITA... May as well they build another Hubble on ISS !

[tater]

You wouldn't want a space telescope anywhere near ISS, actually. Attached to ISS, there would be too much vibration, and constant incoming spacecraft would be using attitude control systems that would be a bad idea for the optics to be exposed to, I imagine.

[Rocketscience101]

I actually would love to see itt taken over by private companies. With the JWT, we could auction the telescope off to the highest bidder, and relieve maintenance and operations to them. 

[Shpaget]

1 hour ago, Rocketscience101 said:

I actually would love to see itt taken over by private companies. With the JWT, we could auction the telescope off to the highest bidder, and relieve maintenance and operations to them. 

If the alternative fate is incineration by reenty, I too would prefer it to be sold to private companies, but I don't see what economic benefit could any such company have. Sure, they could sell viewing time, but I doubt any reasonable price would be able to cover the service and maintenance missions.

[Nibb31]

The ISS is nobody's property to give away. It belongs to the international partners and its fate decided through international treaties. It also requires a significant number of NASA assets to keep running. Handing it over to a commercial operation makes no sense.

[Ten Key]

Interesting.

One of our state senators was in the local news yesterday, with a story about adding a pair of provisions to the NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2016, which was recently passed by the US Senate. One of those provisions was the usual "develop a plan to reach Mars" stuff. (Don't they already have a few of those lying around?) But the other. . .

(Sec. 825) NASA shall identify orbital assets in specified mission directorates that could benefit from satellite servicing-related technologies and shall work across all NASA mission directorates to evaluate opportunities for the private sector to perform these services or advance technical capabilities by leveraging the technologies and techniques developed by NASA programs and other industry programs.

Full text of bill

The provision doesn't mention Hubble specifically, and it looks like it's being interpreted as meaning "designing future missions so that they may be serviced on orbit", but I think its vague enough to serve as a mandate for NASA to start looking at another Hubble servicing mission. 

It's worth noting that Ball Aerospace, one of the larger aerospace contractors out here, was a major player on Hubble and would stand to benefit from a plan to upgrade the telescope. 

 

[Shpaget]

10 hours ago, Nibb31 said:

The ISS is nobody's property to give away. It belongs to the international partners and its fate decided through international treaties. It also requires a significant number of NASA assets to keep running. Handing it over to a commercial operation makes no sense.

We were talking about the Hubble.

Edited February 18, 2017 by Shpaget

[Zerxal]

I highly doubt the new administration would send a crewed upgrade mission, as we have the James Webb Telescope launching next year. It would be a waste of money.

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, PhysicsBrain said:

I highly doubt the new administration would send a crewed upgrade mission, as we have the James Webb Telescope launching next year. It would be a waste of money.

That's like saying "I doubt the new Administration will fix the roof, after all we're getting a new driveway!".    The JWST is not a replacement for Hubble.

[munlander1]

What spectrum will jwst work with?

[StupidAndy]

I really don't see a use for a repair mission for Hubble, it wont solve anything, we don't have anything to transport crew to do it, we have another telescope about to launch in a year, and It sounds just stupid

I really don't see this happening, unless they are doing something good, like Kennedy's moon speech, the government should just keep their heads out of NASA

[WinkAllKerb'']

On 16/02/2017 at 6:33 PM, monstah said:

 

Why do they even do this?

 

the encounter aspect may be, and the ability to repair / improvisation / with a basic set of tool and replcement part from distance for something else than hubble ... sound like a first step for something else later anyway

(( & + just because well, somehow hubble deserve some respect like an elder ^^ because it did a lot , and may be also because you know how politicians may look at this from a story telling aspect and approach (((...))) ))

Edited March 4, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[DerekL1963]

1 hour ago, munlander1 said:

What spectrum will jwst work with?

JWST works in the far infrared.  (That's why it has that insane thermal shield - to increase infrared sensitivity.)  Hubble in the UV, visible, and near infrared.  There's no overlap between the two.

Edited March 4, 2017 by DerekL1963

[wumpus]

Does it have to be crewed?  I understand that the last service job may have been well beyond robotics (it was one of those "bang it with a hammer until it lets loose" jobs), but I'm curious if the thing can have its life extended without a crewed mission.

The main issue are the gyroscopes.  Preferably you would replace them, but would it be possible to mount such beasts elsewhere and connect them to navigation/attitude control by some other means?  I really don't have much hope of NASA launching a crewed mission to Hubble.  Hiring Soyuz and managing to get to that plane is even worse (there is a reason that ISS isn't anywhere near Hubble, and it isn't to protect Hubble).

[tater]

Seems like they should put electronics on the 2 telescopes they already have (the NRO donation of 2 HST sized instruments) and use the bloody things. That's all they need, detectors, and radios. If an HST maintenance mission approaches the cost of flying those, they should just fly the new ones (they have the same size mirror as they all share the same heritage (HST is a spy sat pointed the other direction)).

As DerekL1963 said, there is no overlap with the JWST. (I like the idea of that telescope, but the cost... you could probably fund every single astrophysics PhD in the country for 200 years or more with that money.)

Edited March 4, 2017 by tater

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, tater said:

Seems like they should put electronics on the 2 telescopes they already have (the NRO donation of 2 HST sized instruments) and use the bloody things.

I can't imagine that NRO bothers with anything an astronomer would describe as a "telescope" (you might leak the ability to "read the Pravda", but I doubt they bothered to get significant magnification out of it).  You would need to gut the things (presumably without any guidance about what is really in there) and replace most of the stuff.  In the unlikely chance that anything was in the right plane, trying to combine the parts with Hubble could be interesting (lashing the things together for attitude control could easily be worth it).

[tater]

38 minutes ago, wumpus said:

I can't imagine that NRO bothers with anything an astronomer would describe as a "telescope" (you might leak the ability to "read the Pravda", but I doubt they bothered to get significant magnification out of it).  You would need to gut the things (presumably without any guidance about what is really in there) and replace most of the stuff.  In the unlikely chance that anything was in the right plane, trying to combine the parts with Hubble could be interesting (lashing the things together for attitude control could easily be worth it).

HST is a modified Keyhole. That's why the mirror is the size it is, and not the size of the initial design that was proposed.

Magnification is not what anyone cares about. Resolution is a function of objective diameter. 

The NRO sats given to NASA have shorter focal length than HST, and are better at wide field.

HST was as I said, a KH-11/12 anyway, so it really would require little (a few hundred million $) to get them ready to fly with modern electronics. 

[Canopus]

2 hours ago, tater said:

HST is a modified Keyhole. That's why the mirror is the size it is, and not the size of the initial design that was proposed.

Magnification is not what anyone cares about. Resolution is a function of objective diameter. 

The NRO sats given to NASA have shorter focal length than HST, and are better at wide field.

HST was as I said, a KH-11/12 anyway, so it really would require little (a few hundred million $) to get them ready to fly with modern electronics. 

They only got two mirror assemblies, not whole Satellites. One of them will be used on the WFIRST but it doesn't seem like that results in a cost reduction.

[tater]

26 minutes ago, Canopus said:

They only got two mirror assemblies, not whole Satellites. One of them will be used on the WFIRST but it doesn't seem like that results in a cost reduction.

Really? I was under the impression they got the finished spacecraft, minus the NRO electronics. If that's the case, then yeah, it would be rather more costly than I imagined.

[DerekL1963]

2 hours ago, tater said:

HST is a modified Keyhole.

Um, no.   The optical systems (based on what is known of the KH series) are completely different, as in 'apples and the thing least like apples you can imagine'.  That's one of the reasons NASA wasn't in any hurry to use those mirrors, they're not really suitable for much of anything astronomical and using them doesn't save much money since the mirror is such a small fraction of the total cost.  (The decision to use them on WFIRST was political in nature, not science or finance driven.)