Re: The Hubble Space Telescope...

Ash Wyllie wrote:

> Leaf Fan opined
>
>
> > Unfortunately many things changed after February 1.  Even the official
> > position of the astronaut office at JSC is that astronaut lives will not
> > be risked for an HST retrieval mission, i.e. the benefit of returning
> > HST to Earth is not worth the risko of astronaut lives.  The risk is
> > acceptable for servicing missions where the benefit is scientific knowledge.
>
>
> > The HST Program did a study to determine what would have to be done to
> > bring HST back to in the payload bay and while the study assumed
> > Columbia, i.e. no external airlock, a return mission could be performed
> > with an orbiter that has the external airlock, although additional work
> > would have to be done (servicing hardware mods for HST to fit farther
> > back in the bay).
>
>
> > The current thinking is that some sort of propulsion module will be
> > attached to HST to provide a controlled re-entry at the end of HST's life.
>
>
> If NASA is going to delibrately change Hubbles orbit, why not do 2 burns and
> boost into a 6,000km orbit and give some future generation the option of
> retrieving it for the Smithsonian?
>
>                          -ash
>                          for assistance dial MYCROFTXXX

Boosting HST into a higher orbit has been discussed, but you'd have to 
ask those who said "no" why they don't want to leave HST retrieval to 
another generation.