WASHINGTON – A leading panel of experts handed NASA’s leadership a sharp reproof Wednesday, concluding that the space shuttle should be used to service the Hubble Space Telescope and can do the job without posing unacceptable risks to shuttle astronauts.
The experts also said NASA’s plan to service the telescope with a robot working from an unmanned spacecraft was unrealistic.
The report, prepared for NASA by the independent National Research Council, a division of the National Academies of Science, was certain to reopen debate over NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe’s January decision to cancel a scheduled shuttle servicing mission because of the risks to astronauts.
O’Keefe’s announcement, essentially condemning the popular telescope to death sometime around 2008, provoked national outrage, and NASA subsequently decided to mount a robotic mission by the end of 2007 to replace batteries and gyroscopes, add two new instruments and possibly replace a third.
The council’s panel, however, reviewed all the tasks associated with the mission and concluded that “the likelihood of successful development of the (Hubble) robotic servicing mission within the baseline 39-month … schedule is remote.”
The panel’s report also sharply disagreed with O’Keefe’s assessment that the space shuttle could not fly to Hubble and still be in compliance with the risk reduction recommendations of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the independent panel convened after the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry last year.
In order to fulfill the accident board’s recommendation that shuttle crews be able to perform on-board damage inspections and repairs if needed, NASA has decided that the orbiter will travel only to the international space station, where astronauts can assist with inspections, provide tools and offer a safe haven for shuttle astronauts if they had to abandon the spacecraft.
The panel’s report, however, said that astronauts on a shuttle mission to Hubble in 2006 or 2007 would have the ability to inspect and repair the orbiter with the aid of sensors and spacewalks, and could power down the shuttle in a cocoon-like safe haven mode for up to 30 days.
Boeing is a prime contractor for the shuttle program.
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