Michael Griffin, head of NASA, announces a Hubble Servicing Mission may be possible

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 at 11:04 AM by Administrator

As many astronomers have lamented, the Columbia disaster led to then NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe to cancel a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope as “too dangerous” despite the fact that many astronauts were willing to engage in the mission and that without the mission hubble would become unusable in the next few years. This decision was critized by many astronomers as a waste of a valuable resource. NASA proposed a robotic mission, which was then shot down as very unlikely to suceed. The National Academies of Science did a study at NASA’s request last year and decided that it was only a manned mission that had a reasonable chance of success.

Michael Griffin, the current NASA administrator, is giving a speech at the AAS (as I type) regarding NASA’s mission. He talked of his love for astronomy and then announced that:

So astronomy was my first love among the scientific disciplines [...] In fact, it is my deep appreciation of the importance of Hubble and all of the other great observatories, Chandra and Spitzer, to science and society that prompted my decision that NASA will, if at all possible, use one of the remaining flights of the Space Shuttle for Hubble servicing.

This was followed by a lot of clapping. He then warned us that “Thanks, we still need to figure out if that’s possible.” and there was a bit of understanding laughter that the Space Shuttle still needs to check out before it can be used. But it looks like NASA has finally seen the light and Hubble has a chance of continuing to see the light.

Addendum: I talked to some NASA folks and they all said Griffin had been saying this since he was appointed. In fact, I found a reference to this right on one of NASA’s Hubble webpages (look at the second story about Michael Griffin testifying before Congress). I will say that many of the astronomers I talked to had heard about this potential reversal of fortune for Hubble, which may explain why there was so much clapping.

Addendum 2: The full comments have now been posted online. I have revised this entry to contain the quotes as stated in that article instead of my paraphrasing.

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