How Many Years Left Until the Hubble Space Telescope Reenters Earth's Atmosphere? (dailygalaxy.com) 48
"The clock is ticking" on the Hubble Space Telescope,
writes the space news site Daily Galaxy, citing estimates from the unofficial "Hubble Reentry Tracker" site (which uses orbital data from the site space-track.org, created by tech integrator SAIC):
While Hubble was initially launched into low Earth orbit at an altitude of around 360 miles, it has since descended to approximately 326 miles, and it continues to fall... "The solar flux levels are currently longer in duration and more elevated than previously anticipated, resulting in an earlier reentry forecast for the Hubble Space Telescope if no reboost mission is conducted," Hubble Reentry Trackersays the Hubble Reentry Tracker... ["Hubble has been reboosted three times in its history," the site points out, "all by servicing missions using the Space Shuttle."]
NASA partnered with SpaceX in 2022 to explore the feasibility of raising Hubble to its original altitude of 373 miles. Such an adjustment would have bought Hubble a few more years in orbit. However, the future of this plan remains uncertain, as NASA has not made any official announcements to move forward with it... Solar flux levels, which determine atmospheric drag, have increased in recent years, accelerating the telescope's decline. This change in solar behavior means that the possibility of Hubble reentering Earth's atmosphere in the next five to six years is quite high if no corrective action is taken. ["But it is difficult to estimate this value due to the variability of future solar flux," the site cautions. "In the best case, Hubble may not reenter for 15 more years, around 2040. In the worst case, it could reenter in 4 years..."] Once Hubble reaches an altitude of 248 miles, it is expected that it will have less than a year before reentry...
While Hubble's end may be near, there is a promising new project on the horizon: Lazuli, a privately-funded space telescope funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Lazuli aims to become the first privately-funded space telescope, and it could be the successor Hubble enthusiasts have been hoping for. Schmidt Sciences, the organization behind the telescope, plans to launch Lazuli by 2028, providing a more modern alternative to Hubble with a larger mirror and enhanced capabilities. The telescope's proposed design includes a 94-inch-wide mirror, which is a significant upgrade from Hubble's 94.5-inch mirror, and will feature updated instruments to capture more detailed data than ever before.
NASA partnered with SpaceX in 2022 to explore the feasibility of raising Hubble to its original altitude of 373 miles. Such an adjustment would have bought Hubble a few more years in orbit. However, the future of this plan remains uncertain, as NASA has not made any official announcements to move forward with it... Solar flux levels, which determine atmospheric drag, have increased in recent years, accelerating the telescope's decline. This change in solar behavior means that the possibility of Hubble reentering Earth's atmosphere in the next five to six years is quite high if no corrective action is taken. ["But it is difficult to estimate this value due to the variability of future solar flux," the site cautions. "In the best case, Hubble may not reenter for 15 more years, around 2040. In the worst case, it could reenter in 4 years..."] Once Hubble reaches an altitude of 248 miles, it is expected that it will have less than a year before reentry...
While Hubble's end may be near, there is a promising new project on the horizon: Lazuli, a privately-funded space telescope funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Lazuli aims to become the first privately-funded space telescope, and it could be the successor Hubble enthusiasts have been hoping for. Schmidt Sciences, the organization behind the telescope, plans to launch Lazuli by 2028, providing a more modern alternative to Hubble with a larger mirror and enhanced capabilities. The telescope's proposed design includes a 94-inch-wide mirror, which is a significant upgrade from Hubble's 94.5-inch mirror, and will feature updated instruments to capture more detailed data than ever before.
Two guys I used to work with (Score:5, Interesting)
One worked on something Hubble in the 90s and told me the story about how the old solar panels used to bind up and vibrate like crazy during transitions between sunlight and eclipse...not so good for a telescope.
The other guy, a younger fella, barely older than the Hubble program itself, was convinced in his bones that Hubble and the servicing missions were a waste of money that could be used for astronomy some better way.
Something like that, that lasts almost 40 years in space...that's going to make some lore.
Well done.
Re: Two guys I used to work with (Score:4, Funny)
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Something about an onion on their belt?
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that's President Shmavin Gruesome to you sir
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One worked on something Hubble in the 90s and told me the story about how the old solar panels used to bind up and vibrate like crazy during transitions between sunlight and eclipse...not so good for a telescope.
One of my professors worked on that specific problem. He utilized some pretty sophisticated system identification techniques to generate a black box kinematic model, then developed a controller for it, which could counteract the vibrations much faster than other solutions. Curiously, he was unclear as to whether it was ever adopted for Hubble - it's possible he was actually doing that work on a Hubble-like spy satellite.
About tree fiddy (Score:2)
OK, if you say so. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, what?
Re:OK, if you say so. (Score:4, Insightful)
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OK, but what about the headlines also being slop which frequently don't support the story? I guess what B!zX is going for is that we read none of it?
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>The telescope's proposed design includes a 94-inch-wide mirror, which is a significant upgrade from Hubble's 94.5-inch mirror,
Uh, what?
Maybe they meant that the new telescope's mirror won't have an optical defect that requires lenses to compensate for it.
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Re:OK, if you say so. (Score:4, Interesting)
But, because it was so perfect, characterizing how "off" it was and designing corrective optics for it was not too hard. Aside from those first few years before the first servicing mission, Hubble's "vision" has been outstanding - meeting or exceeding expectations.
Re: OK, if you say so. (Score:2)
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The telescope's proposed design includes a 94-inch-wide mirror, which is a significant upgrade from Hubble's 94.5-inch mirror
That's an editing/reporting problem, as other comments have mentioned.
However, even if they were the same diameter, Lazuli's optical design could still be superior: it is a three-mirror anastigmat where the 2nd and 3rd mirrors are positioned off to the side, rather than being coaxial with the primary mirror. This means that the primary mirror does not have a hole in the center, and the supporting structure for the secondary mirror does not impinge on the primary's field of view.
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Decimal points cause light diffraction, distorting the image.
Correction to the summary (Score:5, Informative)
If you're confused as to how a 0.5 inch smaller mirror is an upgrade, the number is wrong. Lazuli's mirror is 3.1m (~122"), compared to Hubble's 2.4m (~94.5").
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If you're confused as to how a 0.5 inch smaller mirror is an upgrade, the number is wrong. Lazuli's mirror is 3.1m (~122"), compared to Hubble's 2.4m (~94.5").
Not only that, the OG Mirror had distortions, that had tp be corrected in a first servicing mission, givig the telescope "eyeglases". So, a mirror with similar diameter (we agree this one is bigger) but more modern mirror technology and no aberrations would have been progress.
NASA's take on the optical correction:
https://science.nasa.gov/missi... [nasa.gov]
Gary Larson's take:
https://static0.srcdn.com/word... [srcdn.com]
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You make it sound like it was a huge thing. It was a miscalculation made when grinding the mirror that didn't take gravity into account properly (because gravity warps the mirror, they had to take it into account). The actual differenc
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Back when this started I heard it was at 80% capacity before the spectacles. I understand that it improved somewhat until fixed.
It was a miscalculation made when grinding the mirror that didn't take gravity into account properly (because gravity warps the mirror, they had to take it into account).
That's not how I remember it. I had read that someone used a tool improperly, more in line w/ what Wiki sez:
The Allen Commission found that a reflective null corrector, a testing device used to achieve a properly shaped non-spherical mirror, had been incorrectly assembled. (One lens was out of position by 1.3 mm (0.051 in).
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Lazuli isn't up there yet, so we don't yet know how bad the mistakes are, if any.
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Save Hubble ! (Score:1)
So would it be possible to fit a Hubble adapter to the front of an ( unmanned ) Dragon capsule ( similar to the one that will, shamefully, deorbit the ISS ) which would boost it into higher orbit ?
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Make the new construction big enough that the central, stationary hub (spacedock?) is big enough to enclose Hubble, so we can retrofit it as an initial exercise in high-precision manufacturing.
We'll probably never do this, because the humans at the levers of power would rather instigate militarized fights and harm children than work together for the good of
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There are systems available to stabilize and/or boost commercial satellites which have expended their on-board fuel, but of course Congress would never allow NASA to use them since none of their REAL constituents in the MIC would make enough money. Besides, Hubble data insists that the universe is more than 6,000 years old so there's no real interest in Congress to maintain it in orbit.
If the grotesquely wealthy upper class which rules us really wanted to do something good for society they'd fund the missi
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There are systems available to stabilize and/or boost commercial satellites which have expended their on-board fuel, but of course Congress would never allow NASA to use them since none of their REAL constituents in the MIC would make enough money.
They're going to have to send something up there no matter what, because Hubble was never designed for a post-space-shuttle world. It has no propulsion built in, relying on the space shuttle to keep it up or bring it safely down to the ground.
An uncontrolled descent of HST would result in large fragments reaching the ground, potentially including pieces as large as one ton. Imagine a white-hot car landing on a house or school at many thousands of miles per hour. It would be like a bomb going off.
Our gove
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Letting HST reenter the atmosphere on its own would be insanity.
Considering the leadership of our government over the last quarter century, "insanity" seems the most likely route.
Unit conversation fail (Score:5, Informative)
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Apparently, LLMs are bad at rigorous maths, and when a reporter delegates their thinking to an approximation machine without fact-checking the output, you get things like a 27-ish inch conversion error.
No need to blame LLMs. Science reporting was always like this.
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How much is that in inches?
I have the musical accompaniment for this story (Score:2)
Once Eric Schmidt launched his ad-projector... (Score:2)
The problem with "privately funded" (Score:1)
Access to the data becomes restricted because now it's "proprietary". The government has to fund these things to protect open access, otherwise every road becomes a toll road.
Not ambitious enough (Score:2)
Lofting the orbit isn't nearly ambitious enough. NASA (Congress) should fund a robust spacex mission to replace/update failed or obsolete systems, and get even more useful life out of the telescope for a fraction of what it cost the last time it was serviced.
Hubble (my cat) likely to burn up in 4 to 15 years (Score:1)
Kepler (other cat) still working fine.
Space shuttle.. (Score:2)
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Jim Richardson (Score:1)