Hubble is failing piece by piece

[Cleo]

Spectrograph Has Failed (http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=13591). With no plans to service the Hubble soon it will become useless as more systems start failing.

On the upbeat note… with the US no longer wasting all this money on space the government has money for important things like raging wars and building more prisons for people who smoke |potleaf|

[Torn Rose]

Yeah, this is a damn shame, it still has so much it can do but we are better off wasting $ to go into Iraq and look for something that was never there.

It wasnt that long ago this was the pride and joy of NASA and the US, now it's like who cares.....

it's just $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

|pissed| |angry|

[Bill]

I've been reading about this a bit, and it turns out that there is some logic behind letting Hubble die a natural death.

There is a new generation of computer aided telescope arrays being built in various places around the planet that use lasers and computers to unite two or more telescopes to give them the power of multiple hubbles.

These are ground based telescopes, but they will be as much as a hundred or more times more powerful than the hubble.

Now, as I understand it, most of these are international telescopes, being built in places like the Andes.

They shoot a laser thru the atmosphere, and measurements from the laser let them correct the distortions so that the miles of air above the telescope seem as clear as vacuum.

These telescopes are strong enough that we may be able to study that atmosphere around _planets_, yes, that's planets, around stars hundreds of light years away.

If we find free oxygen around those planets, that will mean we have found life like us somewhere else in the universe.

I love the hubble, but there is more reason than I thought to retire it.

[Cleo]

I've been reading about them but they are limited to the part of the spectrum that can make in through our atmosphere so not all wavelengths can be observed.

Also the more telescopes there are the more projects that they can be used for.

The Hubble does not have that big of a mirror and this is why some multiple ground based telescopes are better but it is the only one above our atmosphere.

Just seems a real shame.