No repair mission for Hubble

Donks

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The White House has decided to cut the funding for a mission to service Hubble in 2006.
The White House has eliminated funding for a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope from its 2006 budget request and directed NASA to focus solely on deorbiting the popular spacecraft at the end of its life, according to government and industry sources.
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MSNBC

Well, that's it for Hubble. A few more years of shots, and then it's into the Pacific.
 
It is sad to see something like this go. While MIR was going to take a whole lot of work to save, and there was life at risk, and there is another space station, there is only one hubble.

Hubble has allowed us to see things that telescopes on earth could only dream of.

I would, however, like to know where the money is going. If it is something that will be more beneficial, then it is probably good.
 
And Spitzer and Chandra are already up. But those don't operate in the visible spectrum.

As it happens, however, Hubble is already being surpassed by earth-based observatories. (Things that telescopes on Earth could only dream of? Maybe 5 years ago)


The LBT's glass mirrors were specially cast at the university through a unique process creating a relatively lightweight, extremely strong honeycombed understructure. They will have an edge-to-edge light-gathering surface of 76 feet — about 10 times the mirror diameter of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The end result will be images about 10 times as sharp as the Hubble's, enhanced by a technology called adaptive optics to adjust and correct for the Earth's atmospheric turbulence.
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Source

Hubble was a great (if overly expensive) tool. It's past its prime. Time to let it go. Certainly we shouldn't risk 1/3 of our remaining shuttle fleet in a wasteful attempt to save it.

MattJ
 
I don't think Hubble ever lived up to its potential because of the mirror flaw built in. The corrective optics installed later helped, of course, but that reduced its light gathering ability. So yeah, it's time to move on.
 
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