CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -
The fate of what some scientists dub "the people's telescope'' is again up in
the air as NASA decides soon whether
to squeeze in a last astronaut repair mission to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope.
On
Friday, NASA engineers will debate the safety of sending a fifth and final
manned space shuttle flight
to the 16-year-old telescope, probably in 2008. Soon afterward, NASA
Administrator Michael Griffin will make the final call.
His decision could prolong Hubble's
ability to capture some the most spectacular images of the universe well into
the next decade or allow the telescope to deteriorate into oblivion by 2009 or
2010.
Griffin worked on Hubble
earlier in his career and recently described it as "one of the great scientific
instruments of all time.'' Unlike his predecessor, he has expressed a
willingness to repair it.
"If we can do it safely, we
want to do it,'' Griffin said. "But we have new constraints on ... the space
shuttle system. We have a new understanding of its fragility and
vulnerability.''
The final
Hubble repair mission was canceled
by former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe 2 1/2 years ago after the space
shuttle Columbia disaster
which killed seven astronauts in 2003. The decision was roundly criticized by
scientists and politicians, but the ex-administrator cited the risk to
astronauts and the need to use the remaining shuttle flights to finish building
the International
Space Station.
O'Keefe had proposed using
a robot to
service Hubble, but a scientific advisory panel said the chance of completing
such a mission on time was remote and that a manned
mission had better odds of succeeding. The committee also said the risks of
flying to Hubble weren't much greater than going to the space station.
The primary concern lies
with astronaut
safety. If the astronauts go to Hubble, they won't be able to seek refuge
at the space station should there be a catastrophic problem like the one that
doomed Columbia.
"That's a real comfort to
know that if you have a problem, you have a place to hang out,'' said astronaut
Joe
Tanner, who flew on a Hubble servicing mission in 1997 and was part of the Atlantis
crew that flew to the space station last
month.
The remaining 14 shuttle
flights are dedicated to completing
the space station by the time the fleet is grounded in 2010. If a Hubble
servicing mission is approved, it would have to be squeezed into the space
station construction schedule sometime in early 2008.
NASA also would have
another shuttle on the launch pad, ready to make an emergency rescue trip if
there were a catastrophic problem.
"I'd tell them to go ahead
and do it, but don't grit your teeth,'' said Howard McCurdy, a space policy
expert at American University. "And this is going to be a teeth-gritting
mission.''
On the list of Hubble
repairs are replacement of aging batteries, guidance sensors and gyroscopes.
Among the Hubble's many
scientific accomplishments, the telescope has enabled direct observation of the
universe as it was 12 billion years ago, discovered black holes at the center of many
galaxies, provided measurements that helped establish the size and age of the
universe and offered evidence that the expansion of the universe is
accelerating. But the telescope also has popularized astronomy by producing
countless wondrous images.
"For many people, it is a
symbol of some of the best things about the space program,'' said W. Henry
Lambright, a space policy expert at Syracuse University. "It reaches the
average citizen in the way a lot of space projects, including the space
station, do not.''
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