Today, NASA managers discussed the possiblity of a risky shuttle mission to work on the Hubble Space Telescope in order to extend the life of it. Scientists say that equipment upgrades could keep it going for at least another 7 years. A servicing call was planned for the purpose of installing two new scientific instruments, replace dead batteries, and to replace faulty steering gyroscopes. However, the servicing call was cancelled by Nasa after the Columbia disaster in January 2003. Following the tragedy, NASA made safety upgrades to the heat shield and planned to shelter astronauts on the international space station if a similar disaster. However, a flight to Hubble would still be risky because a crew traveling to Hubble's orbit would not be able to reach the space station. Despite the risks, NASA agreed to reconsider the mission after recieving severe public criticism for cancelling it.
Check out the Article: http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-10-27T191248Z_01_N27459251_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-SPACE-HUBBLE-DC.XML&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-C2-NextArticle-2
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I read a similar article about this. I really hope that they do go up there and fix that, because the international space station can be put off a little bit, or at least one trip. The Hubble is an important piece of scientific equipment, until we can get something else up there to study space.
Yeah, so do I. It's a risky mission, but it could do much good in the name of science. The Hubble Telescope has already helped greatly...just imagine what else we can discover w/ it!! : )
~pyrochica
Speaking econamically, isn't it less expensive to fix what you've got instead of letting it go to ruin and trying to get enough funds to build something new?
At this very moment, somewhere a committee is deciding your life, only you weren't invited
Well, in some cases it is cheaper to make repairs than create something new...but not always. Also, NASA is considering that if a disaster happended, the whole space program could shut down sooner than expected. They are planning on fixing the hubble.
I posted a new blog about it...
http://www.progressiveu.org/190000-hubble-telescope-update
~pyrochica