SpaceX exploring mission to boost Hubble
orbitalindex.com
orbitalindex.com
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...
I wonder what we'd get instead if we dumped equivalent or slightly more resources into a new telescope, instead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/science/astronomy-decadal...
Maybe not Hubble, but maybe the next gen?
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...
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.
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
—Scott Crossfield, US test pilot <https://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/albert-scott-crossfield/>
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...
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.
Another crucial detail: producers of platic packaging engage is deliberate fraud to conflate recycleable and non recycleable plastic. Plastics that say 'commonly recycled' may be unrecycleable anywhere except a leading technology lab.
Another detail: massive fraud in recycling industry:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc...
Most european countries stil do separate recycling, and have much higher recycling rates than UK or US, which have mixed recycling.
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.
But if you can't get dishwasher manufacturers to produce repairable dishwashers, then it's all for naught - we have failed as am industry.
Amd if you can get manufacturers to produce repairable dishwashers, then probably those dishwashers can be repaired by random joe opening a repairshop.
And its not clear why we need a robot.
Thats why our industry is a joke, we were promised robots will deliver our food, but instead robots micromanage indentured servants.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#/media/...
Which may or may not still be relevant.
The longer term goal is the Luvoir telescope but its not yet been approved and will probably require significant R&D like JWST.
- mission to reboost and service Hubble in various ways
- launching a new space telescope mission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
“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”
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.
SpaceX shows what happens to costs when you re-use designs and tooling.
As this is operationalized you could incrementally increase the capability and specialty with each release.
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.
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.
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)
This wouldn't be a profitable enterprise.
With only a few billion dollars spent on maintenance, including five space shuttle servicing missions.
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.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...
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
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.
Of course not, it does mean that we don't have the ability to know if it is useless or nefarious or not.
In reality maybe this doesn't work so well.
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.
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.
I'm pretty sure that SpaceX is being paid for this. They are not a charity but a for-profit company.
With only limited yaw control and no articulation of any kind I was frankly surprised that it was able to see DART at all.
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.
Maybe they'll figure out a way to translate the colours better for consumption.
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.
> 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.
We probably do already, they're just pointed in the wrong direction and unavailable for scheduling.
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.
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)
The active stabilization many modern DSLR and mirrorless market lenses is worth a few f-stops difference.
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.
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.
That's OK, we've got two more like it sitting in storage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.