The Speculist

New Scientist reports today that NASA has developed a new operating mode that could extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope until 2008.

The telescope presently has four working gyros and needs three. With the new procedure the telescope could remain operational with two gyros. Tests of this new procedure have gone well and engineers are hopeful that Hubble will not be significantly limited in this new operational mode.

How much additional life this would give Hubble is really a matter of luck. These gyros fail regularly, which is part of the reason the telescope required regular shuttle service missions. But the shuttle fleet has been grounded since 2003.

In the middle of this news, we are reminded:

...departing NASA chief Sean O'Keefe recently called off efforts to service the telescope with robots on the grounds that such a mission seemed too ambitious to succeed.

A robotic mission to save Hubble might fail, so we shouldn't try? This is both cowardly and illogical. Hubble WILL fail on reentry. If Hubble remains a valuable tool, why not expend some effort to save it? Human lives aren't even being risked with a robotic mission.

The risk calculation must have been: which is more likely to put NASA in the position of answering difficult questions - not acting, or acting and possibly failing?

Well, inaction IS easy.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

- John F. Kennedy