Says Robotic Mission Might Take To Long, Won't Work

Hubble, Hubble, toil and trouble. The astronomy community has been fuming ever since NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe earlier this year announced he would not send a shuttle to repair the aging Hubble Space Telescope. But that's just what the National Research Council wants him to do.

In a report commissioned on Capitol Hill, the NRC said it has little faith in tentative plans for a robotic mission to save Hubble.

"A shuttle mission is the best option for extending the life of the Hubble telescope, and ultimately de-orbiting it safely," said committee Chairman Louis J. Lanzerotti, a consultant for Lucent Technologies and a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in an interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

NASA had planned to send a shuttle to change out Hubble's batteries and prepare it for deorbiting next year. But in January, O'Keefe announced a shuttle mission to the Hubble would simply be too risky in the wake of Columbia's break-up almost two years ago.

The robotic mission, which would use a two-armed robot being developed in Canada. But a lot of scientists are worried that the robotic mission is too complex and simply won't work. Others point out that the earliest NASA could launch a robotic rescue would be 2010. At that point, Hubble probably won't be up there anymore.

Lanzerotti said his group met with O'Keefe earlier in the week and that the adminstrator was willing to think about it. "His comments... were that they would take the report and look at it very carefully and do an analysis," he told the Sun-Sentinel.

But NASA spokesman Robert Mirelson had a different take on the meeting. As part of its recommendations -- proposals O'Keefe promised to accept -- the Columbia Accident Investigation Board wanted to be sure shuttles could find safe haven at the International Space Station if something went terribly wrong in flight. On a Hubble mission, Mirelson told the Ft. Lauderdale newspaper, there would simply be no such opportunity.

But Lanzerotti counters the ISS option wouldn't be needed -- if a rescue shuttle was on the pad, ready to go at a moment's notice.

Former NASA Chief Richard Truly agreed. The retired admiral, a member of the NRC board chaired by Lanzerotti, said the difference in risk between flying to the Hubble and flying to the ISS was "very small."

But even though the NRC committee and an outside contractor hired by NASA to look at ways to repair the Hubble -- Aerospace Corp. -- both think a robotic rescue wouldn't be as practical or efficacious as a shuttle mission, the scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center would beg to differ. They say the technology is much more mature than critics have said. Goddard scientists think they can get a robotic rescue off the ground in just three years.

In the meantime, Hubble continues to orbit the Earth, heaping discovery upon discovery. Peering far into the universe and deep into the past, the space telescope earlier this week captured images of the youngest galaxy on record (above) -- perhaps no more than 500 million years old as seen from Earth.

FMI: www.nasa.gov, www.hubblesite.org