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TOPIC: Hubble Space Telescope


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RE: Hubble Space Telescope
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Next month's shuttle flight to the Hubble Space Telescope faces an increased risk of getting hit by space junk because it will be in a higher, more littered orbit than usual, NASA said Monday.
Managers at NASA's highest levels will need to sign off on the mission because of the increased risk.
New number-crunching puts the odds of a catastrophic strike by orbital debris including bits of space junk at about 1-in-185 during Atlantis' upcoming mission to Hubble. That compares to 1-in-300 odds for a shuttle flight to the international space station, shuttle program director John Shannon said Monday.
Hubble is at a considerably higher and dirtier, so to speak, orbit than the space station - 350 miles versus just over 200 miles. That extra altitude will expose Atlantis to more pieces of space junk, any of which could slam into the shuttle.

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In commemoration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100 000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal.

During Hubbles 100 000th orbit around the Earth it peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170 000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies.

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Hubble’s Rechargeable Batteries
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The famed Hubble Space Telescope relies on specially formulated rechargeable batteries that provide power to the telescopes science instruments and critical components during each night orbit.
During Hubbles sunlight (or daytime) orbit, its solar arrays provide power to the electrical components and charge the batteries so they have enough power to support Hubble during its night orbit. Since Hubble spends about one third of its 97 minute orbit around the Earth in the dark it must rely on the energy that is stored in its onboard batteries to supply power to the entire telescope..

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RE: Hubble Space Telescope
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The date of the shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope should be confirmed in the next few weeks, Nasa says.
The flight is currently set for 28 August but the US space agency admits this will slip by four to five weeks.

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Space shuttle astronauts will attempt an unprecedented in-orbit repair of key Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instruments during the servicing mission scheduled for August 2008. The repairs, along with the addition of two new instruments, will make Hubble 90 times as powerful as it was after its flawed optics were corrected in 1993

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Hubble's Top Ten Discoveries

Speeding UniverseHow Old Is the Universe?
Alien PlanetsBlack Holes: Humungous and Among Us
Gamma Ray BurstsQuasar Mysteries Revealed
Planet Construction ZonesEarly Universe
Comet Fragments Bombard JupiterCat's Eye Nebula

"Hubble played a key role in discovering that a mysterious form of energy called dark energy is acting like a cosmic gas pedal, accelerating the universe's expansion rate. Dark energy shoves galaxies away from each other at ever-increasing speeds and works in opposition to gravity" - NASA.

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Another pointing gyroscope has failed on the Hubble Space Telescope, leaving it with two gyros in operation and a third available as a spare. But the telescope can still observe though with slightly reduced efficiency with just one gyro, and managers believe it will survive until the space shuttle services it for the last time a year from now.
Hubble uses gyros to point and stabilise itself in space, but the devices have been a continuing problem for the telescope. It was originally designed to operate with three, but to keep the telescope in working order until the final shuttle servicing mission, engineers devised a way for it to operate on two gyros instead. It switched to this two-gyro mode in 2005, and engineers have since written computer programs to allow the telescope to make observations with a single gyro.
On 1 September, the most recent gyro failed. It had been operating for more than 6.5 years,

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Find Hubble

Do you know where the Hubble Space Telescope is? It could be overhead or located somewhere else in the sky. When displayed in Sky, you can see where Hubble is projected on the background of stars, and it updates as Hubble moves! Is Hubble visible tonight? Have a look.

Open in Google Earth

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