Hubble telescope loses camera after fuse blows
USA Today: The Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope has failed and can't be fully repaired, NASA officials said Monday. The camera was installed on the HST in 2002 and is scheduled to be replaced in the 2008 service mission.
"Obviously we're very disappointed," said Hubble program manager Preston Burch. The lost instrument "was the newest camera, the highest-tech instrument and … the most heavily in demand." Two-thirds of the most recent proposals for use of Hubble required the advanced camera, he said.
Comments
In view of this recent problem with the Hubble, I recall that half a century ago, I proposed putting telescopes up to high altitude by means of dirigibles. Advantages: lower cost, ease of repair. Now with adaptive optics, they need not require excessively high altitudes. A future use of Hubble-like space telescopes would be to put them in orbit far out, say as far as Saturn's orbit, and thereby improve parallax measurements, and hence galactic and cosmological distance scales.
Posted by: Frank R. Tangherlini | February 21, 2007 3:06 PM