The administration of the President of the United States is discussing the possibility of upgrading the Hubble telescope

Astronaut James "Jim" Hansen Newman is photographed during the installation of the instrument at the Hubble telescope on March 5, 2002. Source: NASA

The Hubble Orbital Telescope is one of the most important scientific instruments, at least for astronomers. On the basis of observations made with the help of Hubble, a lot of scientific works, articles and monographs were written. There are about 11,000 different publications in total. This system has been working on the Earth’s orbit for 27 years, and during this time scientists have been able to study the principles of the formation of early galaxies, find out the rate of expansion of the Universe, understand how the emergence and evolution of black holes occur.

Over the past 27 years, technology has advanced far ahead; many elements of the orbital telescope design are hopelessly outdated. Now advisers to the new US president Donald Trump are discussing the possibility of sending astronauts to the telescope to replace these outdated parts. This may allow Hubble to work more efficiently, while continuing to provide valuable data to Earth scientists. NASA last year extended the life of the telescope by 5 years, and replacing the important elements of the system will extend the life of the Hubble for another five years or more.

A vehicle for delivering astronauts to a telescope is proposed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, a company from the state of Nevada, USA. This is a Dream Chaser winged spacecraft that looks like Shuttles. Now the ship is in flight tests, by 2019 it will be ready to send astronauts to the ISS and, possibly, other points in outer space. When landing a ship, it is assumed that not only planning, like that of the Shuttle, but also independent flight and landing on any runway length of at least 2.5 km. The case of the device is made of composite materials with ceramic heat protection.
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The updated Hubble can serve as an alternative in the event of the failure of the new telescope James Webb . The project to build this telescope, worth $ 9 billion, will be completed by October 2018. Then "James Webb" will be sent to L2 L2. Here, unfortunately, the person will not be able to reach in the near foreseeable future. So, if problems arise with the new telescope, and Hubble, for example, is already decommissioned, scientists will be left without important tools for exploring outer space. In the same case, if the Hubble is updated, and NASA extends its life for another several years, this problem will not arise.

"Hubble now works well, providing unique capabilities that are not available to any of the existing ground systems or those systems that are planned to be created (including spectroscopy and high-resolution photographs). We hope that Hubble will provide these capabilities at least a few years after the launch of the telescope “James Webb” in 2018. However, the Space Telescope Science Institute does not have an official position on updating the “Hubble a "to increase its service life," said Tom Brown, head of the Institute for Space Research with the help of the Space Telescope.

In the past, astronauts have already flown to Hubble; in total, five service missions were organized. All of them were carried out in the framework of the Space Shuttle program . The sixth mission, if implemented, will help NASA accomplish several tasks set by the Trump administration. Among other tasks - the development of cooperation with private space companies and the implementation of short-term missions, which will give tangible results already during the first presidential term of Trump. In the United States, as in other countries, very many areas of the state’s activities are tied to politics, and astronautics is no exception.

Now the Trump team must choose the next, already the thirteenth in a row, the head of NASA, so much will depend on this choice. If in Washington they decide to update Hubble, then for the new head of the agency this project will be one of the priorities.


Assembling "James Webb"

Experts say that the question of the need to send the next mission to Hubble to update it also depends on the success of the WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope) project. If this project is successful, the question arises: “What can the Hubble do that which WFIRST cannot?”. If there are many differences, and they are significant, then updating the Hubble makes sense. By the way, WFIRST plan to make available for maintenance, in contrast to the "James Webb."

Regarding the latter, at the end of last year, the project's scientific leader, John Mather, stated that the telescope was already ready and quite capable of starting work in orbit. According to experts participating in the project, the new telescope will help begin the study of galaxies that are billions of light-years away from Earth. We are talking about the opportunity to use a kind of time machine, watching the galaxies that appeared almost immediately after the Big Bang. This will help scientists clarify the origin of the universe.