Later, Hubble
From Spaceflightnow.com:
A final planned shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most scientifically productive spacecraft ever launched, has been cancelled, primarily because of post-Columbia safety concerns and a new directive to retire the shuttle by 2010, NASA officials said today.
Basically what's happened is that due to the shuttle disaster last year, they don't want to do missions that aren't going to the shuttle for safety reasons. It's sad. :(
I loved the Hubble, once those pictures came rolling in... they were just amazing. Yea, the Webb is going up, but not until 2011, and there are instruments that are completed and just sitting around. A lot of good science has come out of the hubble.
My first instinct is that if they asked for volunteers that would be willing to go up, there wouldn't be a shortage of takers. But I guess it's not just human lives you'd be risking, but rather billions of dollars in a shuttle.
Maybe they could just tap it towards the moon or something at some point, where it'd crash into 1,000 pieces and we could check it out when we have our moon base. Or just slingshot it out into space. The idea of it burning up in the atmosphere when it's gyros have winded down just doesn't sit well with me for some reason.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJanuary 18, 2004, at 07:51 PM
