<story><title>SpaceX exploring mission to boost Hubble</title><url>https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2022-10-05-Issue-188/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mlyle</author><text>Yup.  Though--- I do wonder about the desire to keep it functioning at all costs.  Servicing is expensive: humans and their consumables aren&amp;#x27;t cheap.&lt;p&gt;I wonder what we&amp;#x27;d get instead if we dumped equivalent or slightly more resources into a new telescope, instead.</text></item><item><author>themanmaran</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s amazing to see a 32 year old chunk of hardware remain active and useful to this day. And projected to remain functioning for another 15 years.&lt;p&gt;While James Webb has become the new celebrity satellite, Hubble is still cranking out scans every week. It even caught some of the DART impact last week[1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;feature&amp;#x2F;goddard&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;webb-hubble-capture-detailed-views-of-dart-impact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;feature&amp;#x2F;goddard&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;webb-hubble-captur...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Sharlin</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re going to have another Hubble up in 2027 if all goes well: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, or Roman for short. Originally known as WFIRST, it&amp;#x27;s a 1.6m-primary-mirror declassified Keyhole spy sat similar to Hubble, but with a shorter focal length and thus a much wider field of view (around 1&amp;#x2F;4 square degrees, roughly the area of a full moon). Still, its angular resolution will be comparable to Hubble thanks to a much higher-resolution, 300 megapixel imager. It&amp;#x27;s a visible&amp;#x2F;near IR instrument, so won&amp;#x27;t replace Hubble&amp;#x27;s near UV capabilities. Also, Roman won&amp;#x27;t have a traditional spectrograph on board. What it will have, however, is a novel coronagraphic instrument for imaging and spectrography of companions of nearby stars (brown dwarfs and gas giants in wide orbits -- still no imaging exo-Earths or even exo-Jupiters, alas).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telesc...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;roman.gsfc.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;roman.gsfc.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;why_Roman_Space_Telescope.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>SpaceX exploring mission to boost Hubble</title><url>https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2022-10-05-Issue-188/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mlyle</author><text>Yup.  Though--- I do wonder about the desire to keep it functioning at all costs.  Servicing is expensive: humans and their consumables aren&amp;#x27;t cheap.&lt;p&gt;I wonder what we&amp;#x27;d get instead if we dumped equivalent or slightly more resources into a new telescope, instead.</text></item><item><author>themanmaran</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s amazing to see a 32 year old chunk of hardware remain active and useful to this day. And projected to remain functioning for another 15 years.&lt;p&gt;While James Webb has become the new celebrity satellite, Hubble is still cranking out scans every week. It even caught some of the DART impact last week[1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;feature&amp;#x2F;goddard&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;webb-hubble-capture-detailed-views-of-dart-impact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;feature&amp;#x2F;goddard&amp;#x2F;2022&amp;#x2F;webb-hubble-captur...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dwheeler</author><text>I expect NASA to do the calculations, but I would expect boosting the orbit of an existing working telescope would be &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; cheaper than building a new one &lt;i&gt;AND&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;ALSO&lt;/i&gt; putting it in orbit. There are relatively few telescopes outside Earth&amp;#x27;s atmosphere; keeping Hubble running seems like a good idea.</text></comment>