When will the Space Shuttle fly to fix Hubble?

Is there replacement for Hubble ready? Hubble as the eye of humanity has bring us so much fantastic images of the Universe. I will deeply mourn its loss if Hubble has to be abandoned.

It is the US gift to all people on Earth, and so I am grateful.

Its a shame that thing broke. I thought they were making a replacement, but bush cancelled it or something, can't remember. It gets really cool images.

It's not quite dead yet. The imaging spectograph only accounts for about 30% of the used hubble time. I believe the spectograph was used for collecting data about distant galaxies (distance measurements, etc). All other functions of Hubble are working fine.

They are still working to find out if the spectograph is indeed dead, or is just suffering from a minor glitch that can be repaired remotely.

Originally posted by sensfan
They are still working to find out if the spectograph is indeed dead, or is just suffering from a minor glitch that can be repaired remotely.

I sure hope so, it has been an incredible tool of science over the years. But, I would not put it past O'Keefe to stage a little accident to justify his unpopular position to let hubble go. If its gets too "broken" then they cant fix it. Hopefully the Hubbel Supporters in NASA wont allow it. But you never know.

Originally posted by FredT
I sure hope so, it has been an incredible tool of science over the years. But, I would not put it past O'Keefe to stage a little accident to justify his unpopular position to let hubble go. If its gets too "broken" then they cant fix it. Hopefully the Hubbel Supporters in NASA wont allow it. But you never know.

I was thinking the same thing actually. With it "broken" it'd just be another piece of space junk and would have to just burn up in the atmosphere.

It is a shame that this is the way that hubble has gone, especially after the whole fiasco of the mirror when it was first put up into space. Hopefully NASA will spend the time to fix it because it has become a great tool for astronomers.

Originally posted by Kenshiro
It is not completely "broken" as was stated earlier but unfortunately there are going to be no shuttle missions to repair it.

i was just being skeptical to it being broken at all even.

The dumbed down, toy version replacement of Hubble is only scheduled to be ready in 2010 if i remember corrently.

It'll only have as much uses as Hubble has with its current 70% functionality and a big scratch on its lens.

Imho, if they can send a rocket up there with the newer sat, they could as well send up some astronauts and repair Hubble itself, this thing is a true gem of engineering.

ill go and fix it. i dont care if they they are still making improvements to the shuttle ill would gladly go and fix it.

I'de agree with FREDT that it wouldn't suprise me if this was staged in order to let it sink more into people's mind, that it's just too old and broken down to risk lives and more money to fix.

I personally think this is good. I seem to be the only person in this forum that thinks it has done good but ALL good things come to an end.

The next gen scopes will be no doubt better.

Instead of us focusing on galaxies and what not that are so far away, I wish we would spend that money on something to get us into space. I personally believe scram-jets can do it. Nasa had a succesfull X-43 go Mach 7 and latter this fall they will send there 3rd and final X-43 to go Mach 10. They cancelled there X-43C which would of being bigger and better, why did they cancell something so important to we can go jump around on the moon again!

I don't think that we should start building permanent bases anywhere in our solar system until we have a much cheaper way of getting off our own rock.

So with the X-43 cancelled i'm now pinning my hopes for cheap access to space on The Space Elevator. I've read alot about that and the only thing that seems to be holding them back is the paper thin 3 foot wide cable, but nano tech is taking big strides so that should only be a couple of years off, I Hope.

if the government does not fix the hubble it would be a terrible wast

God, I am glad they plan to repair it. The Huble telescope is in my opi nion he best damn innovation to mankind. Making it possible to get a glimpse hhow great and infinite the universe is.

a new telescope would be better then the old one i wonder why no only a few people noticed that.......