Mission to Save Hubble Could Put Astronauts at Risk

Oct. 19, 2006 — -- Hope for NASA's celebrated Hubble Space Telescope, which has produced some of the most spectacular images of the universe, hinges on an engineering meeting to analyze the risks of a shuttle mission to repair its aging systems. The meeting is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 27, and the person who will decide whether the mission takes place is NASA administrator Michael Griffin.

What engineers are wrestling with, though, is the rescue plan. If something goes wrong on a shuttle flight to fix Hubble, could the crew be saved?

"We won't have CSCS [safe haven on the International Space Station], so we have to review our launch-on-need posture. Is that something we really want to try to do, because for Hubble, we would have to have a bird on the other pad, and that has implications," he explained.

Astronaut Joe Tanner, who once flew a Hubble mission and flew on the last shuttle mission this summer, understands the risk.

"You can't get to the station from a Hubble orbit. It is physically impossible," he said. "Commit to Hubble. You are going to Hubble. Or you are coming home. Without a safe haven, how long can you stay airborne while you are trying to fix whatever problem you have? If it's not fixable, obviously you want a rescue capability. How quickly can you get that there?"

Engineers at NASA are considering prepping two shuttles in parallel, with the second shuttle waiting on the other launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center, ready to take off on short notice, something that has never been done before at the space center.

When Mike Griffin took over as NASA administrator, he revived hope that Hubble could be saved. Twenty years ago, Griffin worked as a project engineer on Hubble on a team designing a fine guidance sensor for the space telescope.

The accident, which doomed the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, put the Hubble mission scheduled for 2005 on the chopping block.