Space Studies Board Annual Report 2004 (2005) / Chapter Skim
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4 Short Reports
4 Short Reports
Pages 65-74
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From page 65... ...
At the request of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Research Council recently established the Committee on the Assessment of Options forExtending the Life of the Hubble SpaceTelescope.' The committee's statement of task charges it to assess the viability of a shuttle servicing mission, evaluate robotic and ground operations to extend the life of the telescope as a valuable scientific tool, assess telescope component failures and their impact, and provide an overall risk-benefit assessment of servicing options 2 The statement of task includes the possibility of transmitting an interim report to NASA prior to the submission of a final report. The committee thanks you very much for your generous allocation of time in meeting with it on June 22, 2004.
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From page 66... ...
The final report will address m detail all fourof the requests m the study's statementof task. IMPORTANCE OF A HI IBBLE SERVICING MISSION The Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
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From page 67... ...
that will clarify the feasibility of a robotic servicing mission. Substantial resources will be required in Fiscal Year 2005 to accomplish this The committee finds the proposed robotic mission to be highly complex due to the inherent difficulties with supervised autonomy m the presence of time delays; the integration of vision and force feedback m six-degree-offreedom assembly and disassembly tasks with high-degree-of-freedom, dexterous manipulators; and the coordinated control of the high-inertia HRVs with a long-reach robotic arm grappling with a high-inertia payload.
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From page 68... ...
As an early step, NASA should begin immediately to take an active partnership role that includes HST-related demonstrations in the robotics space experiments that are now underway in other agencies m orderto ensure that the returns from these experiments can be beneficial to a potential robotic Hubble servicing mission. The four HST shuttle servicing missions already completed have demonstrated that crew servicing and unstnument replacement can be highly successful.
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From page 69... ...
Reconunendation. At the same time that NASA is vigorously pursuing development of robotic servicing capabilities, and until the agency has completed a more comprehensive examination of the engineering and technology issues, including nsk assessments related to both robotic and human servicing options, NASA should take no actions that would preclude a space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
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From page 70... ...
. The 2000 decadal survey report ranked the Terrestrial Planet Finder third in its list of major NASA missions behind the James Webb Space Telescope (then called the Next Generation Space Telescope)
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From page 71... ...
39) 71 The original mission that was considered by the 2000 decadal survey ranked highly based on its potential science impact on terrestrial planet findings and on the astrophysics reach afforded by the high angular resolution at infrared wavelengths, However, the widely recognized technical challenges of the interferometer prohibited the decadal survey committee from prioritizing it as a flight mission.
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From page 72... ...
An example involves extremely deep observations, significantly more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope ultradeep field, of the annularregion around the stars targeted for the planet search. TPF-C might have additional astrophysics reach, but the TPF project has not allowed broader astrophysics goals to drive the design orthe cost of the TPF-C optical telescope assembly.
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From page 73... ...
Neither the 2000 decadal survey nor any pnor NRC reports had considered the addedvalueforterrestrial planet finding of having an optical mission such as TPF-C as Complement to TPF-I, The panel finds thatthecurrent scientific goals of the TPF project are consistentwiththoseenvisionedinthe 2000 decadal survey, Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium. But the panel does not consider that this finding justifies advancing at this time the priority that can be accorded TPF as combined TPF-C and TPF-I missions.
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From page 74... ...
If implementation of TPF-C were to delay, or even preclude, other highly ranked astronomy and astrophysics missions, such an outcome would represent a substantial tipping of the portfolio's scientific balance. The panel urges NASA to consider the addition of TPF-C within the broader context of the entire astronomy and astrophysics program, Signed by Wendy L Freedman Chair, Panel to Review the Science Requirements for the Terrestrial Planet Finder 1 he panel acknowledges thatthe TPF mission is of interest to disciplines dnoughou~ the space sciences, and thatthe missioncouidconceivably be of higher priority to other disciplines.
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