Hubble on the moon

I was thinking about the Hubble mission and weather we should continue it or not, then i was like, wait they always wanted a telescope on the moon, so i thought what if we put the Hubble telescope no the moon, do one last mission to upgrade it and attach it to the moon, and in my opinion, what a better telescope to do it other than Hubble. What do the rest of you guys think?

[edit on 3/30/2005 by Schmidt1989]

Originally posted by Schmidt1989
I was thinking about the Hubble mission and weather we should continue it or not, then i was like, wait they always wanted a telescope on the moon, so i thought what if we put the Hubble telescope no the moon, do one last mission to upgrade it and attach it to the moon, and in my opinion, what a better telescope to do it other than Hubble. What do the rest of you guys think?

We currently have no ship capable of reaching the moon and returning. Designing a mission to go to hubble, take it to the moon, set it up on the moon, and come back would cost a lot more than a simple servicing mission, which is the only problem.

Besides, on the moon, you are limited by where the moon is. While in space, in orbit, you can control where you want it to point and when. You have many, many more windows of opportunity.

Yeah i guess your right, never really thought of that. Maybe we should put it into orbit around the sun, far far out, past pluto (if possible). maybe well see new planets in our solar system or something.

Originally posted by Schmidt1989
Yeah i guess your right, never really thought of that. Maybe we should put it into orbit around the sun, far far out, past pluto (if possible). maybe well see new planets in our solar system or something.

I don't think the distance from here to Pluto would make a huge difference, given the other distances involved. I DO know that the solar energy Hubble would receive would be greatly, greatly diminished, as well as the signal strength we would receive back. Not to mention, again, the money involved getting it out there...

yeah maybe we should just kind of let it rot into oblivion, then in 10 years, send Hubble II up there with extremely high tech stuff.

Hubble wasn't built by god, its not one of a kind. Hubble is nearing its death...I'll be happy when it meets its firey grave, that way rediculous ideas like this one, will be no more.

rediculous idea? it may have not been a good idea but hey it was a quick thought by a 15 year old, so jeeze lighten up dude.

THis would require a manned mission to the moon at the least. It would be better just to build/mount a new one there instead of trying to re-use a 20 year old telescope.

How is the hubble going ot be seriviced while it is on the moon?
How are you going to prevent the lenses and such from warping cause of the gravity of the moon?
what are you going to do to protect the telescope when it is in direct sunlight?
If you place it on the far side of the moon how will you communicate with it?

sorry, but your idea highly unlikely to happen

[edit on 3/30/2005 by Jehosephat]

Even if you did find a way to get it to the moon it would have to be set up on the dark side of the moon the side that protects earth from a lot of meteors so yeah. It would take a lot to protect it. Like Amorymeltzer said the signal would be decreased and solar energy would diminish.

bringing the Hubble up to a more stable orbit, while costly in terms of dedicating a shuttle misswion, is not a tremendously involved problem -- nowhere near the th4chnological challenges of putting it on the moon.

Given that we spent a lot of money getting it up there and a lot more money fixing the stupid primary mirror; and given that it is one of the best visual scopes made, I think it should be re-aligned, placed in a higher orbit, and allowed to gather data and pictures for another fifteen years.

It is a perfect complement to Chandra X-Ray and the ESA X-ray Multi-Mirror for Xrays and HETE-2 and Integral for Gamma Rays. While letting it de-orbit and burn up saves us some money in the short run, it would be extremely cost-ineffective when you think of all the discoveries it has made -- and still could make.

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
Given that we spent a lot of money getting it up there and a lot more money fixing the stupid primary mirror; and given that it is one of the best visual scopes made, I think it should be re-aligned, placed in a higher orbit, and allowed to gather data and pictures for another fifteen years.

But, heh, you know, Mars > Discoveries.

In all truth, yeah, it really was a great machine, and it's terrible to see it go. But, I have the utmost faith that another one will get up there, easily within my lifetime. We like to have the full spectrum of awesome scopes, especially the one we can actually SEE.

Reminds me of a few years back when Russia was planning on going to the Moon.

They were just gonna wait for MIR to crash into it.

RDR^2

well, Russia was the first to (crash) land on the moon back before even the first man got into space. Tho all they did was use the moon as a target for thier reduced payload missiles. They had an advatage over the US in that department cause the US found a way to make thier nuclear warheads lighter.

Besides, there is too much dust "flying" above moon surface limiting the optical telescopes performace..

I think the cost of repairing Hubble and moving it to a different orbit is cost-prohibitive. For that amount of money we could build a new space-based telescope that has far greater capabilities than Hubble. Think of how far consumer CCD imaging has come in the last five years alone- you can now buy a 16MP camera for the price of a 3MP camera a few years ago. With all the lessons learned from Hubble and the increase in technology since it's construction, we could build a truly awesome telescope.

I hate to see Hubble go. It has been a truly amazing telescope. Still, it's time to say goodbye.

Now if I could only figure out a way to salvage that mirror and build a telescope of my own with it...