Today, I saw the bad news that the Hubble telescope, which has been exploring space for mankind for 30 years and uncovering countless mysteries of the universe, has failed three times in 5 days, and NASA has had to suspend all scientific missions to find out the cause of the failure. The good news is that NASA believes that the Hubble telescope will eventually resume operations, and another potentially better news is that a billionaire has offered to use a Private Dragon spacecraft from Space X to help NASA repair the Hubble telescope and raise its orbit to another 20 years.
Since the beginning of the plan, the Hubble telescope has had an ill-fated and stumbling journey. The funds were cut, the space shuttle **, and finally in April 1990 by the space shuttle Discovery, after being sent into space, I took a look back**, hey, how is it vague, it is almost the same as what you see on Earth?After careful calculation, it turned out that the edge of the main lens of the telescope was misground, and the difference was 22 microns, which is about 1 50 of a human hair.
What to do?Pull it back with the space shuttle to repair it?No way. Send someone to space to change the camera?It's time-consuming, labor-intensive, and dangerous. In the end, someone came up with a simple solution, didn't the lenses grind wrong?Wouldn't it be nice to sharpen another lens to correct it and let Hubble put on a pair of glasses?
Then in 1993, the first maintenance mission of the Hubble telescope was carried out, including "wearing glasses", replacing 4 gyroscopes, computer upgrades, improving orbits, etc., and finally made the Hubble telescope sharpen, out of control, and brought many new discoveries in the universe, it can be said that many of the important new knowledge about the universe we now have brought by Hubble, including the age and expansion of the universe, the existence of black holes at the center of galaxies, etc.
Later, in 1997, 1999, 2002, and 2009, NASA carried out 4 more Hubble maintenance missions, including two replacement of all 6 gyroscopes, in 1999 and 2009, so smart as you may already know what went wrong with the Hubble telescope this time, yes, gyroscopes!
There are 6 gyroscopes on the Hubble telescope, 3 are usually used, and the other three are used as backups, mainly used to control the attitude, direction and stability of the telescope. So every 10 years, it's all replaced.
It has been more than 14 years since the last gyroscope was replaced, and although the quality of the gyroscope may be getting better and better, it can't stand the high-intensity use of Hubble, and by 2018, 3 of them have completely failed. The remaining 3 are more labor-intensive, because although 2 or one gyroscope can still turn, it cannot perform very fine operations, and the observed sky will also be somewhat limited.
The first glitch occurred on November 19, when a gyroscope had an incorrect reading, and the Hubble telescope went into safe mode, and the NASA team resumed Hubble after resolving the issue, but on the 21st and 23rd, the gyroscope caused the telescope to enter safe mode twice, which means that the gyroscope is also going to die
NASA had to terminate all tasks and find a solution to the problem, but if it really didn't work, I'm afraid it would only be able to use two gyroscopes.
But last year, Jared Isaacman, a billionaire and private astronaut, proposed a plan to use Musk's Crew Dragon spacecraft and commercial spacecraft to carry out repairs and raise its orbit to 600 kilometers, extending its life by 15 to 20 years. He named the program the Second Polaris and claimed that it would cost almost nothing.
NASA, Space X and Isaacman discussed the possibility of such a plan last year, but the Hubble telescope was working well at the time, so it wasn't very urgent, but now, NASA may need to seriously consider this option. Isaacman has taken the initiative to ask on Twitter to go up and repair it.
If I were NASA, I would make a tender to go to space to repair the Hubble telescope, and whoever pays more will repair it, not only will it not cost a penny, but it will also earn a sum of money to do other research. The winning bidder also earns, even Hubble has repaired it, is it still a problem to repair the others?Such an advertisement is worth a thousand dollars!
What do you guys think of this idea?
In addition, the Hubble telescope can be used by anyone regardless of nationality or academic background, as long as you have a sufficient reason to observe and have been reviewed and approved by scientists from the governing body. And it's very simple to use, you don't need to go to space to look at the eyepiece, you don't need to go to the United States, after approval, you just need to work out the technical details with NASA engineers, and then they will operate Hubble to get the detection data, and then you can go from the Internet.
How?While Hubble is still available, you should also apply for an observation, in case you catch a glimpse of the alien spaceship UFO?