We’ll get an update on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope tomorrow (June 4), and it could be a pretty big deal.
On June 3, the agency announced that the Hubble Space Telescope team will hold a press conference on the status of the observatory tomorrow at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT). Specifically, officials said the purpose of this meeting will be to “provide an operational update” for the telescope. Sounds routine, right? Well, not necessarily. The Hubble Space Telescope team doesn’t often hold press conferences like this one – especially one with just two presenters, both with pretty high-profile titles.
Mark Clampin, director of the agency’s Astrophysics Division and Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, will speak, as will Patrick Krauss, Hubble’s project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
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The news comes three days after NASA announced that Hubble had gone into automatic safe mode due to erroneous readings coming from one of its last three working gyroscopes, which are devices that help scientists make sure the telescope is pointing in the right direction. Since it launched in 1990, Hubble has gone through a bunch of gyroscopes, including some replacements. Now there are three left.
Before you panic too much: Yes, this may seem like a terrible combination of facts in isolation. Still, there is some context in which to put them – a context that gives hope that Hubble is not yet done with its duties.
First, in its announcement of the upcoming conference, NASA said something that agency officials have said time and time again: “NASA expects Hubble to continue making discoveries, working with other observatories such as the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope, throughout this decade.” and in the next.”
It’s a sentiment that has been shared during previous gyro problems that Hubble has also faced, including earlier this year and late last year; the last incident actually involved a short series of complications, all of which were resolved. Yet none of them required a conference to inform the public that Hubble was returning to it. Online messages were enough.
This brings us to the next point: Hubble doesn’t actually need the three gyroscopes to work.
As NASA has stated, Hubble technically only requires one gyroscope to function properly — although according to the European Space Agency (which is partnering with NASA on the mission), single-gyro mode may limit scientific observations to some extent.
Still, even if the telescope’s already-flawed gyroscope turns out not to get back on track, there are two that could allow the space explorer to continue exploring the universe. In 2004, for example, the observatory was put into dual-gyro mode after a planned Hubble servicing mission was canceled following the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. Eventually, the Hubble 4 servicing mission replaced all six gyroscopes for the last time in 2009, and there was eventually a fifth servicing mission after that. But, again, Hubble now only has three of these gyroscopes, one of which is the source of the latest count. The other three suffered what is known as a “flexible wire failure,” which is related to wiring.
According to a NASA breakdown, in the event that only two gyroscopes remain operational, it is likely that the team will leave one on and place the other in reserve. That way, if one of those two remaining gyros falls off, the other one that was at rest will be nice and fresh and ready for Hubble’s final leg.
Final stretch? Hopefully not, but unfortunately it is true that scientists believe the telescope could be decommissioned in the mid to late 2030s as the force of our planet’s atmospheric drag slowly brings the craft down from its orbit approximately 320 miles (515 kilometers) above Earth.
Such a decommissioning would involve either a controlled re-entry of the telescope back into Earth’s atmosphere, or a small range boost to a higher Earth orbit where it could remain safely for several decades. If Hubble re-enters the atmosphere, it will mostly burn up, as other spacecraft do during this process – but it is too big to completely i’m burning I assume that anything that can be saved will be preserved with the honor it deserves.
If you caught the brief mention of servicing the spacecraft in orbit, as astronauts did in its early years, it’s unclear if that’s even a possibility anymore.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, intrepid NASA astronauts were able to reach Earth orbit and take on the observatory to install upgrades and perform repairs. The aforementioned Service Missions 4 and 5 were part of this effort. Consider a microgravity body shop for a space telescope that also includes spacewalks.
Hubble’s most famous servicing mission is probably the first one that occurred shortly after the telescope was launched into space, as its primary science data appeared to be corrupted when it returned to Earth. Hubble’s images were blurry, simply put, and scientists realized they had accidentally given the spacecraft a defective mirror. No problems, the agency said, and sent astronauts to make the necessary adjustments. In space!
Recently, billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is known in the commercial space sector for the successful all-civilian space launch Inspiration4 that he funded and his upcoming Polaris Dawn venture, tried to revive the concept of servicing Hubble. However, this concept has not yet come to fruition, and it is uncertain whether it ever will.
However – and I am aware of the hypocrisy behind what I am about to say – speculation is the enemy of optimism.
In theory, anything is possible, we’ll know more about Hubble’s fate soon, and it’s probably best to put our worries on hold until there’s something to worry about. Also, in general, Hubble continues to take space images as if nothing has changed. In fact, a new star portrait came out today, and Hubble had a hand in building it. This is a very cool view of a young star that has a comet-like tail because other stars (hidden in the image) are pulling on its material.
Editor’s Update 6/3: On May 31, NASA announced that Hubble has entered safe mode.
