NASA asks for help from robots to make Hubble telescope repairs

DENVER – NASA’s chief told the nation’s astronomers Tuesday he is optimistic robots could repair the Hubble Space Telescope and said the space agency is seeking proposals to do just that.

The 14-year-old telescope, whose brilliant pictures from space have earned it more than a cult following, appeared to be doomed just a few months ago.

But the audience of astronomers – about 1,000 of them – erupted into applause when NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe told them NASA had just issued a request for proposals for a robotic repair mission.

The American Astronomical Society meeting where O’Keefe spoke has lobbied to keep the Hubble telescope running. So have astronauts, congressmen and thousands of citizens.

Without repair work, NASA estimates Hubble will stop making observations by 2007 or 2008, when its batteries are expected to conk out. O’Keefe said the goal would be to service the big space observatory by the end of 2007.

Spacewalking astronauts were supposed to install new batteries and other gear on Hubble in 2006. But that shuttle mission was canceled in January because of safety concerns after the loss of seven astronauts in the shuttle Columbia accident last year.

NASA was ready to pull the plug on Hubble. But there was a huge outcry over the loss of the telescope responsible for the most dramatic and colorful pictures from space.

An Internet petition was signed by thousands, O’Keefe’s e-mail system was clogged with complaints and members of Congress demanded reviews.

Even John Glenn weighed in, saying another servicing mission was necessary “to get every year’s value out of that thing.” And other astronauts, including those who had worked on Hubble over the years, wrote O’Keefe arguing that the risk was worth taking.

O’Keefe told the astronomers it is “extremely doubtful” the space agency could soon mount a manned mission to Hubble that would satisfy new safety rules recommended by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. “We’re nowhere near close to proving it’s safe,” O’Keefe said.

Instead, he tentatively opened the door to the idea of using robots, citing some successful lab simulations and enthusiastic support from engineers.

O’Keefe has a very speedy timetable planned. The robotic proposals must be completed by mid-July; NASA will evaluate them for six to eight weeks with a Labor Day target.

But O’Keefe noted the robots’ primary responsibility would be to successfully rendezvous with the telescope and then install a module that would guide the spacecraft back into Earth’s atmosphere, steering it away from cities and other vulnerable targets. He stopped short of promising repairs, preferring to wait to see what the engineers offer in their proposals.

Meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences is studying the Hubble issue from all sides but its report is expected at the end of the summer at the earliest.

“Time is of the essence,” O’Keefe said, calling the Academy study merely “an opinion.”

“We won’t sit out the summer before we move ahead,” he said.

While NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope see the universe in X-ray and infrared, respectively, Hubble observes visible light and peeks into the ultraviolet and near-infrared.

Astronomers have said they would be at a loss if Hubble is abandoned and the infrared James Webb Space Telescope, set for launch in 2011, is lost in a rocket explosion or has crippling design flaws.