Sen. Mikulski asks NASA to review Hubble decision
Sen. Barbara Mikulski is asking NASA to review the decision to not service the Hubble space telescope, guaranteeing an early death for the orbiting science platform that has revolutionized astronomy.
Mikulski (D-Md.), the ranking minority member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget, told NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe in the letter sent Wednesday that she was shocked by the decision given the Hubble's extraordinary contributions to science.
"I ask you to reconsider your decision and appoint an independent panel of outside experts to fully review and assess all of the issues surrounding another Hubble servicing mission," Mikulski wrote.
Calling Hubble the most successful NASA program since the Apollo program that put man on the moon, Mikulski also asked that all planning, preparation and astronaut training activities continue until Congress has reviewed the issue.
NASA announced last week that it won't send the space shuttle in 2006 to service Hubble, which will eventually become useless as the gyroscopes which hold it steady and other equipment fails. (Related story: Officials seek help to keep Hubble alive)
The space agency said it will focus on President Bush's plans to send humans to the moon and Mars and would instead use virtually all of the remaining missions of the shuttle, which is also being phased out, to complete construction of the International Space Station.
Meanwhile, the operators of the Hubble Space Telescope say they are being bombarded by suggestions from the public on how to save the orbiting platform.
Of the hundreds of e-mails, about a quarter ask, "Why can't the Russians help?" Others suggest towing it to the space station for repairs, said Bruce Margon, associate director for science at Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble for NASA.
The institute is considering all offers and will set up a Web site to take suggestions from the public, he said.
"They are enormously concerned, they are perplexed, they are angry," Margon said. "They ask 'What percentage of the NASA budget is this?' And we tell them it's about 1%."
While the Russians might be able to help, towing the Hubble to the space station is impractical because the two are in very different orbits, Margon said.
The space station is in a lower orbit, and takes a much different path around the Earth. If the Hubble could be moved into that orbit, it is not clear whether the space telescope could work because of drag from the small amount of earth's atmosphere present at that altitude, he said.
The institute is accustomed to finding creative solutions, said Margon, who noted the idea for the so-called contact lenses used to fix the telescope's incorrectly built mirror was developed at the institute.
The 2006 mission was to be the fifth and final mission to the space telescope before its 2010 scheduled retirement. NASA's decision also means two new instruments designed for Hubble won't be placed aboard the orbiting telescope, which will deny scientists across the globe the best science Hubble has yet to offer.
"We feel that we should consider every conceivable idea to get back the last four to six years of discovery that Hubble was on the brink of making," Margon said.
"We have a staff of 550 of the most talented astronomers and technical people, so you can bet they are all thinking about this day and night," Margon said.
In addition to the Baltimore institute, about 350 employees at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Beltsville also work on the Hubble.
So far, no one has come up with a better solution than using one of the remaining shuttle flights to deliver the last two instruments and service Hubble, Margon said.
One instrument, the Wide Field Camera 3, is designed to view large swaths of the cosmos in ultraviolet, visible and infrared light. The second, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, is designed to study ultraviolet light from distant sources.
NASA does plan one final mission to Hubble, an as-yet undesigned, unmanned rocket that will guide the space telescope back to Earth for a fiery crash into the Pacific. NASA originally planned to use the shuttle to retrieve Hubble and display it at the Smithsonian, he said.
"That's part of the heartbreak, something is going to have to visit Hubble anyway," Margon said.
The Space Telescope Science Institute is online at stsci.edu/institute.
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