A fiery death awaits the world’s best known scientific instrument, the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope – a prospect that has many astronomers and space agency officials at loggerheads.
The Hubble, one of the most productive telescopes ever built which has re-written the textbooks on astronomy, is scheduled to fall to Earth and burn up in 2010. “In and of itself, it’d be great to extend Hubble,” said Dr Andrew Gould, an astronomer at Ohio State University in Columbus. “But there are a number of other missions to consider and if they have to be cannibalised, it wouldn’t be worth it.”
Hubble’s fate is being debated over the past few days at a meeting of astronomers and space agency officials in Baltimore, USA. A panel of independent scientists is expected to make a recommendation to U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration about Hubble’s fate by October 1 this year. The telescope was put into orbit during a 1990 space shuttle mission, and has been visited by astronaut crews four times for upgrades and repairs. The U.S. space agency plans one more servicing call to the telescope before it is removed from orbit.
Before the Columbia shuttle accident on 1 February 2003, NASA had been planning to dispatch a shuttle to return Hubble to Earth for display in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air & Space Museum in Washington. Dr Anne Kinney, director of NASA’s astronomy and physics division, said it wasn’t worth the risk to human life to bring home a museum piece. Instead, the agency is now considering launching an unmanned rocket to the telescope to steer it home. Some scientists pale at the thought of Hubble’s demise, particularly if its replacement, the James Webb Space Telescope, is not yet in orbit. The next-generation space telescope is scheduled for launch in August 2011.
Those arguing to extend Hubble’s life would like NASA to plan for a sixth servicing mission, which would include towing the observatory to a higher orbit to keep it far enough away from the fringes of Earth’s atmosphere to remain at an operational altitude for several additional years.
NASA has said extending Hubble’s life will cost another US$700 million, money that will have to come from other programs. “You have to ask if the government is going to put up that kind of money for something that is 1970s technology, or are you going to want to do something new,” Kinney said.
By: Irene Mona Klotz
