Blogs / Cosmic Variance

Remember a few months back, when we were all excited about the Space Shuttle taking a crew of astronauts to fix and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)? At the time, it looked like the repairs worked well (as in, nothing obvious went wrong, electronics woke up and said “hi”, etc). However, until the instruments actually take data, one never knows.

Well, now we know.

The new and refurbished instruments officially kick astronomical butt.

Even better, I’ve been hearing rumors of killer numbers, at least for the imaging cameras — throughputs that are 15% better than measured from the ground, electronic read noises that are lower than before the instruments broke a few years back. I have no numbers on the spectrographs, but the press release photos show some nice looking spectra, which is a zillion percent improvement on the pre-repair state of the telescope, for which the only spectroscopic capabilities were grisms (which only the most studly of spectroscopists dare to use). Phil will probably have more, given his history with one of the refurbished spectrographs.

(For the near-infrared channel of the new imager WFC3, I can personally verify awesomeness. We got some imaging during the last month, and had to sign non-disclosure agreements that we would keep our mouths shut, which was nearly impossible because the data quality was insane.)

Anyways, everyone involved in making this happen should be very proud!

One word: AWESOME.

Ok. A couple more words. The launch was spectacular, and went off on time and without a hitch (beyond a bit of ice on part of launch vehicle, but that they got off at the last minute). We did wind up at Banana Creek, and the view was primo. There were a bit of low clouds, so we lost sight of the shuttle pretty quickly and couldn’t see the separation from the boosters. But, the short time we could see it was completely worth it. The noise was terrific — low and rumbly, then building to dense crackles like the finale to the biggest fireworks display ever. I also wasn’t prepared for how intense the light of the engines was. You really couldn’t look right at it without discomfort. My favorite moment was probably when the smoke started pouring out of the base of the launch assembly, when you really knew “Holy crap, it’s gonna go!!!!”. Everyone was screaming and pointing and whooping it up. I did wish the President had come, because I get the sense that Obama doesn’t yet buy into the promise of spaceflight — I don’t see how he couldn’t have been moved and impressed by so many people with so much expertise coming together to make something so amazing happen.

And then five minutes later everyone was back on the air-conditioned buses trying to get the heck out of the 90+ degree heat and humidity.

From what I’ve gathered from NASA-TV and from conversations at various parties(*), the mission is going well. A camera on the robotic arm has scoped out the outside of the shuttle, and last I heard all looked pretty good, although they did go back for a second look near the nose. They’ve now safed Hubble, getting ready for it to be grappled on Wednesday a bit before noon. EVA’s (i.e. spacewalks) start on Thursday.

Other random notes:

Favorite free trinket? You know those little charms that kids decorate their Croc’s with? Ball Aerospace was giving out ones shaped like the Hubble Space Telescope.

Favorite item from the gift shop? NASA astronaut oven mitts.

Favorite unexpected surprise? Kennedy Space Center is in the middle of a nature preserve, so it’s teeming with wildlife. We’ve seen gators, raptors, vultures, bald eagles, turtles, and a crazy assortment of long-legged shore birds.

Least enjoyable moment(s)? Lines in 95 degree heat, with no shade. Followed by more lines. Seriously — it’s crazy trying to get that many people into secured launch viewing areas. We got there almost five hours before the launch, and still probably spent two of the intervening hours waiting in one line or another. When your kid voluntarily turns down ice cream in the burning sun because the lines are too long, you know it’s bad.

(*) Parties? Yes, shuttle launches seem to be like the Oscars.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am now deep into the Committee Era of my career. This means a lot of sitting in conference rooms, writing reports, and making Important Decisions. The work is essential for keeping the scientific enterprise running, and for ensuring the future of the field, but it also means time away from home and work, with no compensation beyond the frequent flyer miles you accrue, a satisfying sense of paying it forward for younger scientists, and sometimes a decent dinner.

However, occasionally there are perks. On the right you see the invitation I got in the mail a few weeks back. No, it’s not for yet another committee meeting, but instead is an invitation to the mutha-frakkin’ space shuttle launch! Booyah! Rockets! Loud noises! Massive objects going really fast in directions they are not meant to go! (um, can you tell I’m excited?)

The launch is for the final servicing mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. The astronauts (including astrophysicist-HST-repair-god John Grunsfeld) will be overhauling both the scientific instruments and many of the systems on the telescope itself (see the great interactive graphics put together by the New York Times). I could go into exhaustive detail about everything they hope to fix, but the mission should wind up doing something like the following:

Before.	After.

Even in its somewhat, shall we say, “well-loved” state, HST is still an amazing device, and still sends back cutting edge science, in spite of the fact that it’s down to running on a ~15 year old camera and back up electronics. But man, if everything in the repair mission goes well, the telescope is going to be incredible. Let’s all keep fingers crossed for the safety of the astronauts, and wish them the best of luck with their work!

(PS. I’ll be part of a press conference on Sunday, helping to honor WFPC2, The Camera That Wouldn’t Die. I’m guessing it’ll be on NASA Select (on cable). It looks like you can also stream video directly to your computer. Launch is scheduled for 2pm Monday the 11th!)

(PPS. And Astropixie has an image up of the most awesome NASA promotional poster ever created. I first saw it on a hallway at the Space Telescope Science Institute and have been coveting one ever since. Seriously — click over and take a peak.)

Remember when that defunct Russian satellite crashed into the Iridium satellite a week or so ago? Lots of debris, some of which came down as weather?

Well, not all the debris came down. Most was left in orbit, and apparently has already had some effect on other satellites, as people had feared.

And worse for astronomers, Nature (subscription only) is now reporting that with the increased debris, the risk to the Space Shuttle and its crew may now have been pushed up to a level that precludes the upcoming servicing mission (SM4, currently scheduled for May). NASA is currently evaluating the situation, and we should all know more in a few weeks. But, if the servicing mission is cancelled, it’s going to be a huge blow for astronomers. (It wouldn’t be as tragic as losing another crew, however, so I completely support what NASA is doing in this case.) I’m speculating that if the servicing mission is cancelled, there might be an opportunity to try a robotic servicing mission, which would be good practice for learning how to eventually service satellites out at L2. But it seems unlikely that a robotic mission could bring the full complement of COS, WFC3, ACS, and STIC on-line, whereas the SM4 crew would have a good chance of getting them all in, along with other upgrades to the satellite’s systems.

(h/t to someone at dinner, who’d gotten a tip from Steinn’s blog.)

Because of the delay in Hubble’s servicing mission to May (from this past October), NASA is rapidly running out of science projects to do on the telescope. The proposals that they accepted for Cycle 16 are essentially complete, and they’ve done most every snapshot target that anyone asked for in the past two cycles.

To fill in the gap, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) put out a supplemental call for proposals with a ridiculously short turn around time (3 weeks!) requesting proposals that were either large (more than 75 orbits) or innovative/risky. They also looked at some Director’s Discretionary proposals to run in January, because they can’t review the new proposals fast enough to get them on the telescope in time.

The latest details are:

* NICMOS restart didn’t work, so 53 proposals are being held in reserve in case they can get the restart to work in February.

* 230 WFPC2 proposals requesting 14230 orbits and 989 SNAPs (12:1 and 4:1)

* 2 Director’s Discretionary proposals approved — one to image the Lockman Hole and another to do UV imaging of some of the SINGS galaxies

I’m pretty impressed that the community could get together that many proposals on such a short notice. The majority will probably be recycled from previous submissions, but certainly not all. Oversubscription rate is pretty high, so this is not an easy Cycle!