News & Views item - January  2005

 

 

Hubble Trouble? (January 25, 2005)

    The Hubble Space Telescope is something of a darling of optical astronomer's and with good reason. As Ken Pounds of the University of Leicester, UK puts it, "Hubble is arguably the most successful astronomy mission ever."

 

    Not withstanding that assessment, the talk around the traps once again is that its death knell is about to sound. With US President Bush proclaiming his 2006 budget on February 7, NASA let it drop that its input to the federal budget for 2006 contains no request to save the ageing telescope. Instead, it earmarks funds to decommission the instrument, i.e. to arrange a "seaman's funeral" in the Pacific.

 

Seeing as Hubble has become something of an icon in the 14 years of it sending back invaluable data for astronomers, cosmologists - astrochemists and even physicists as well as astonishing images of the universe to the wonderment of the general public, the suggestion of killing it off could cause sufficient consternation to make the US Congress rise up and allocate sufficient funding to allow the repair and servicing of the aging instrument.

 

Two of the six gyroscopes that stabilize the telescope no longer work, and as more fail, Hubble will lose its ability to focus on a fixed point. Its batteries also need replacing before they run down, which is expected to happen in 2007 or 2008.

 

At the beginning of last December a committee of the US National Academies' National Research Council recommended that NASA launch a manned rescue mission to service Hubble as soon as possible. It's been costed at about US$1 billion, rather less than 5 days funding for the US' adventure in Iraq. And based on what Ken Pounds has opined to Nature, "The budget leaks, widely reported in the US media, may be an attempt by Hubble supporters in the government or NASA to put the debate firmly back in the public arena... The fuss could put pressure on politicians to save the popular mission."

 

And just what President Bush's funding request will be for his vision of firing off men to the the Moon and Mars will also be revealed in his budget request. To many scientists that vision may or may not be slightly more scientifically valuable than the circus stunt of firing persons from canons but it certainly will be much more costly.