NASA leaders deny a claim that NASA's safety rationale for canceling the future repair of the Hubble telescope is baseless * This claim was made in a report by an engineer at the agency * Flying to the space station is more dangerous
NASA has given a definitive "no" to growing demands to change its decision and extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA chief Sean O'Keefe strongly opposes and says that the renovation mission should be canceled due to the risk to the safety of the astronauts.
According to him, new rules issued following the Columbia disaster do not allow astronauts to visit Hubble. The US space agency said that if the telescope does not receive the necessary service, it only has a limited number of years left to operate.
"Despite the difficulty of admitting it, there is life after grief," said Ed Weiler, director of space science at NASA. Weiler, and other senior officials faced claims by NASA engineers based on leaked NASA documents that the mission is no more dangerous for astronauts than a flight to the space station. The report, written by engineers who remain anonymous, argues against the unpopular decision that the mission can be postponed to 2005 or 2006.
Without the mission, in which NASA was supposed to replace worn-out gyroscopes and improve the cameras and detectors, the telescope would cease to operate and would have to be brought down to burn up in a controlled manner in the atmosphere.
At a press conference, Wheeler together with Bill Reedy, director of space flights at NASA and John Grunsfeld - the agency's chief scientist, expressed their sorrow at the expected end of the Hubble project.
Reedy criticized the report and said that there were no details that were not known to NASA when the decision was made to stop service to Hubble. Grunsfeld took part as an astronaut in Columbia in the last upgrade mission of the Hubble in 2002, and he was the last to "embrace" the Hubble, he said that it was a rational decision.
"We have a relative whose days are few, and we all feel bad about it," he said. "I believe that the most important thing is to ensure that the time that remains is quality time."
The reasoning for abandoning Hubble is incorrect, says a NASA engineer
10/2/04
NASA's decision to abandon its scientific "jewel in the crown", the Hubble Space Telescope, cannot be justified on safety grounds - according to two reports by a NASA engineer that were recently circulated in scientific and political circles. The unsigned documents are attracting attention on Capitol Hill, and especially in the Science Committee of the House of Representatives, which is supposed to discuss the decision regarding the mourning at its meeting on Thursday of this week.
The documents have caused excitement among astronomers, who hope that their circulation in wider circles will help stimulate a discussion about the fate of the telescope. The reports deepened the skepticism of many astronomers about the claim that safety reasons, rather than politics and money, were behind NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's announcement last month that the space shuttle's planned maintenance flight to the telescope in 2006 had been canceled. As a result of the cancellation, astronomers say, the telescope likely will cease its activity within three years, instead of continuing to function until the beginning of the next decade, as originally planned.
In explaining the decision, O'Keeffe cited a recommendation from the committee that investigated the Columbia shuttle disaster last year, according to which NASA should develop a method to assess and repair damage caused to the shuttle's thermal protection system. O'Keefe said that it is too dangerous and expensive to develop an "autonomous" capability of inspection and repair for a single flight to the telescope, even though NASA has committed to developing such a method for flights to the International Space Station.
The new reports challenge O'Keefe's conclusion and claim that the director's statement "has no support". According to these reports, the recommendations of the Columbia Disaster Investigation Committee, and NASA's "return to flight" plans, include the development of an independent ability to test and repair the shuttle tiles, regardless of the flight to the space station. This independent capability is needed because the space shuttle may discover a fault before it arrives at the space station, or the space station may grow in size until it is too complex to serve as a repair station.
One of the reports concludes that missions to the telescope are "just as safe, or even more so" than flights to the space station "that take place in the same time frame". The author of the articles is a NASA engineer who compiled the reports based on inside information and refused to identify himself for fear of losing his job. Copies of the documents were given to the "New York Times" by an astronomer who is not a member of NASA and opposes the decision to abandon the telescope in space without treatment.
The documents claim that flights to the space station may actually be more dangerous than flights to the telescope, for several reasons. Due to the angle of the space station's orbit relative to the equator, the shuttle must expend more energy to reach the station. This fact increases the chances of a malfunction, which will prevent the ferry from reaching its destination. Furthermore, one of the main dangers to the shell of the space shuttle comes from micro-meteorites, which hit it while it is in orbit. When the shuttle is close to the telescope, it can change its position somewhat, thus protecting itself from damage. Such positioning is not possible when the shuttle is located next to the space station.
The reports include an answer to the claim made against launching a shuttle to Hubble. According to this claim, while the International Space Station can serve as a "safe haven" for astronauts in the event that the shuttle flying to it is damaged, the shuttle that will fly to Hubble will not have such a shelter. However, according to the engineer, this option can be provided to astronauts by launching a flight to Hubble shortly before launching a planned flight to the space station. If a problem is discovered, it will be possible to launch a second shuttle to rescue the crew.
Dennis Overbay New York Times
