Demystifying him.
This reminds me of the last time Hubble needed repairs two decades ago, and Sean O’Keefe didn’t want to risk a crew on it after Columbia. When Mike Griffin came in, he reversed the decision. I won’t be surprised if the same thing happens this time.
When you design an orbiting space telescope in such a way so that it can be serviced in-orbit. You service it in orbit…
They did design Hubble to be serviced in orbit, but they didn’t make it easy. The astronauts trained for years to work on Hubble. They had to remove a lot of screws to gain access, and keeping those screws from floating away in weightlessness and while wearing those gloves was no easy task. In addition, we no longer have the Shuttle with an airlock and a robotic arm to hold Hubble steady.
If they decide to extend Hubble’s life, perhaps the best way is to attach a stabilization module with new gyros to the telescope’s base. Even that isn’t easy because there will be issues of command and control, power, and satellite balance to consider.
I’ve wondered but not researched the feasibility of using the Crew Dragon Trunk to hold Hubble components. The gyro cabinets, if I recall, are quite large. You may be right. I’ve advocated here and elsewhere for an airlock module to be built that could dock with Dragon that included a robotic arm for stabilizing objects in orbit. If you want to dedicate one to Hubble you’d keep it in a co-orbit for future servicing missions w/o needing a lot of Delta-V. But having several of these hanging out in LEO could be quite useful.
Perhaps with Starship things like this will be done. Focusing on the MVP (minimum viable product) rather than stuffing a ton of stuff into a design. Like a house, certain rooms drive expenses and can’t really be done without but adding space is relatively cheap.
Getting Starship to this level of operational capability doesn’t overlap well with the timing of the collapse of Hubble’s orbit. If Hubble is to be rescued it will have to be done with F9/Dragon hardware.
Well, my other suggestions would have been to use a Cygnus or their MEV as Larry J said but I was thinking of the largest soon to be available option.
Grok says the dimensions of the gyro cabinets are roughly 20x16x12. That doesn’t seem too big? The article implies Isaacman had a solution worked out. Maybe he can get it done.
Side note: I asked Grok how many gyro cabinets would fit in the crew dragon trunk and while the answer isn’t important, I tried to teach him the first rule of packing a car. When things don’t fit, you push and squish. He replied that that works for soft things but I reminded him everything is soft if you push hard enough.
In any case, can’t be too sentimental. If it costs too much to fix in either money or time, best to focus on the future and learn from the experience to make something better next time.
I can’t see them using Crew Dragon’s trunk for any substantial mass. In the event of a launch abort, the extra mass would reduce the craft’s acceleration, compromising safety. You could use explosive bolts to jettison the cargo, but that requires new interfaces to the vehicle and introduces a new potential failure mode in the LES. NASA wouldn’t like that.
I wonder how long it would take to build a modified Cygnus cargo vehicle for the job. It would need a docking port compatible with Crew Dragon, an airlock, a robotic arm, and crew workstations. Launch Crew Dragon and Cygnus, then dock. Rendezvous with Hubble. Grab it with the robotic arm, then perform the EVAs to make repairs. Easy peasy.
For some form of “easy peasy” 🙂
We’d be lucky to get it done in time.
To use a car analogy, when it costs too much to fix or when parts or people who even know how to work on the fine thing are not available, time to get another car, new or used?
Beyond a certain point, repairing a car becomes a restoration project because what you are driving is “cool” rather than simply transportation. So says someone who spent almost $1900 doing a timing belt, water pump and oil-seal “service” on a 1997 Camry. The other two quotes for $3600, and this is for what is considered normal maintenance on a boring basic-transportation car to be performed every 80,000 miles, whether it needs it or not.
I understand there may be some low-mileage KH-series spacecraft that could be repurposed.
9-meter diameter payload fairing available…
Grok says Hubble has until mid 2030’s… I wouldn’t count Starship out as a refurbishment platform.
The multiple-screws approach was on the last servicing mission, when they decided to try replacing a card in a box rather than the whole box. Other repairs to Hubble (gyro or reaction wheel swap, instrument change out) are much easier and it was designed to do that. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125 Flight day 7)
Dave Akin of University of Maryland’s Space Systems Laboratory built a prototype servicing robot to do the last Hubble maintenance job, and demonstrated that it could perform every task required. This was done under Sean O’Keefe’s NASA. They were about to sign a contract to build a flight article when Mike Griffin was installed as NASA Administrator. He immediately put a stop to the process, taking the position that only humans could do the job. I don’t know how long it would take to resurrect UofMD’s effort, if it could even be done.
Seems like the key repairs (assuming no upgrade to the optics) are the gyros and rebooting to a higher orbit.
I got a confirm from ChatGPT on the dimensions quoted by Wodun, so maybe those units could easily fit within the Dragon capsule cargo space and not the trunk. Then it’s largely an EVA with an evacuated capsule (already demonstrated), to replace the gyro units. Put the broken ones back in the capsule, repress and then its an ass-end to ass-end re-boost using Dragon positional thrusters in the nose (according to illustrations I’ve seen). Then its home for a job well done. And maybe another future service update in a decade or so using a Starship….
Mark Clampin was head of the Astrophysics directorate. he tried to cut funding for Hubble and Chandra orbiting observatories. He essentially wanted to shut Chandra down. But Congress and others intervened and now Isaacman will be in charge. He seems very supportive of Chandra:L he appeared at the 25 years of Chandra Symposium.
And the article you linked to said:
“Isaacman has also been an advocate for NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory. NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget request proposed a steep cut in the operating budget for Chandra, one that astronomers argued would effectively shut down the 25-year-old space telescope. Isaacman was among those who leapt to Chandra’s defense.”
Chandra and others have submitted their proposal for Senior Review. The in-guide budget that Chandra was given was essentially a shutdown budget.
However, Clampin was moved out of the Directorate and is now now serving as acting deputy associate administrator for the science directorate. He replaces Sandra Connelly, who NASA said last fall was planning to retire at the end of the year.
Clampin said he accepted the one-year assignment to support the Science Mission Directorate during the transition to the new Trump administration.
So I think Clampin may have been stripped of control and moved to some position where he can’t cause trouble.
I wonder how much, if at all, Isaacman had to do with that.
I’d certainly like to think he had something to do with it – it’s the romantic in me.
Which makes more sense, free floating scopes or far side of the moon scopes? Dust-related issues or orbital mechanics-related issues?
I’m not a fan of lunar dust.
Lots of scopes or just a few? What can you afford or what do you need?
Don’t need need any of them so they should go with what they can afford.
Any of them free-floating could be designed around the use of an OTV type vehicle that can move the satellite for servicing or pop off to be replaced by another OTV. In an ideal world, this OTV wouldn’t be a one off but rather a mostly off the shelf model.
My idea for rebuilding ISS (described several years ago) included a machine shop built from a Cygnus coupled with a Shooting Star. Add an RMS and you can move it between orbits with a tug (using HEEO to do the changes at lower delta-v). It’s still a useful idea, even considering SS. I’ve described Gateway as a dirigible space station. So’s this idea, just littler. With a billion $$ you could probably have the first one aloft in a year or two.
Hubble is saved. Gateway is DEFINITELY dead. SLS and Orion are ONLY MOSTLY dead. Prediction, the SLS/Orion abomination will fly through Artemis III and done.