space.newscientist.com — Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993.
Jan 11, 2008 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJan 11, 2008
"...NASA declared the mission a complete success." NASA would say that now wouldn't they. So where are the recent pictures, the Dust Columns and the Hubble Deep Image, both from the mid 1990's, are endlessly resubmitted and not much else. When the genuine astronomical peer groups endorse the science returned from HST, not NASA or the endless procession of no hopers in the Carl Sagan mode, the Big Bangers who wound the clock back to the pre Copernicus era, by putting the Earth back at the center of the universe. Redshift is an artifact of distance not actual physical recession, observable redshift applies to all observable astronomical objects near and far, and is constant in all directions, thus an object viewed from the South pole on Earth has the same redshift as an object at a similar distance viewed from the North Pole, similarly on the equatorial plane. Were redshift indicating actual movement, objects at an intermediate distance which would have an observable redshift from a more distant object. In that model the galaxy between us and the more distant object should be speeding toward us, in which case there would be an observable blueshift, and since there are no objects in the entire observable universe that do exhibit blue shift , we are left to assume the Earth is at the center of it all. Well it is not.
ledwynJan 11, 2008
I was going to make a joke like:"WMDs and CIA tapes are outside of Hubble's focus" but I didn't think anyone would get the double meaning.You prove at least one reader might have.
facewartsJan 11, 2008
Are we absolutely sure global warming hasn't caused Hubble's failures ? Almost everything else that happens in our world is blamed on global warming. Just wondering.
ebfoxbatJan 12, 2008
One could (and I would) argue that fire was not created it was harnessed. And how can you possible justify that the transistor hadn't done much to expand mankind's knowledge of the universe?!? Unfathomable! No transistor means no radio telescopes, no computers, no Digg, no shuttle, no highly complex orbital trajectories, no gyroscopic orientation.When asked this question once in school, my teacher's contribution was 'plastic' also very hard to argue against.
txaggie08Jan 12, 2008
True story. One of the profs here at A&M worked on Apollo. Don't ask him if we landed on the moon, he'll go Chuck Norris on you.
zonessJan 13, 2008
Exactly, NASA decided to put some of their ever-disappearing money to good use by keeping a very important telescope functioning. I also see this as hope.
Closed AccountJan 16, 2008
If it's not able to resolve terrestrial sized planets around stars like the terrestrial planet finder was I don't care in the least. All it is if it can't do that is looking at the same boring stuff we've been looking at for the past 10-20 years. If there is or is not other life in the universe is the most fundamental question that can be answered by astronomy...not weather this or that black hole is REALLY 10 billion solar masses or 10.93948394834938498349 billion solar masses....pfft.