HomeScience & TechNASA nearly 33yearold observatory still has plenty of cuttingedge scienceand astronomers want...

NASA nearly 33yearold observatory still has plenty of cuttingedge scienceand astronomers want to extend its lifespan

As soon as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) began operating last year, the comparisons began. Astronomers and others have posted side-by-side images online of the same celestial objects captured by JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope, pointing out how much sharper and more detailed those from JWST can be.

But don’t count Hubble out just yet. A telescope from NASA and the European Space Agency is still making big discoveries after nearly 33 years. Beth Biller, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh in the UK who chairs a committee representing scientists who use HST said “There’s still a lot of science to be done with HST”.

Tom Brown, head of the Hubble Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. “He’s not because he has unique powers. People are saying, ‘Is Hubble going to be useless now?”.

While JWST detects infrared wavelengths, making it ideal for observing distant galaxies, Hubble studies the universe mostly in other wavelengths, including the high-energy ultraviolet light emitted by wonders such as exploding stars.

 It also has sharp vision at visible wavelengths, allowing the telescope to capture unprecedented images of stars, galaxies and cosmic phenomena closer to Earth. Because no other observatory can do these jobs so widely and well, Hubble is still in high demand, and researchers make far more demands on their time than the telescope has available.

Astronomers want to maximize what they can get from HST while it’s still useful. Engineers estimate the $16 billion telescope will continue to operate through the end of this decade and possibly into the 2030s. But the race is on to get as much science as possible in the remaining years – and to take advantage of its operational overlap with JWST.

Earth’s atmosphere filters out most of this light

Many astronomers are most excited about HST’s ability to detect UV wavelengths that cannot be studied well from the ground Earth’s atmosphere filters out most of this light. NASA doesn’t plan to have another powerful UV telescope in space until the 1940s.In the meantime, Hubble is pretty much the only game for a big chunk of astrophysics.

This includes UV light emitted from young stars that glow as they absorb gas and dust. Two years ago, STScI astronomers began surveying around 200 such stars, the largest observing program ever conducted with HST.

The goal is to create a library of UV information from these stars that future astronomers can use to understand stellar evolution. The survey is 96% complete. Hubble also shines in studying ‘transient’ phenomena, such as exploding stars that appear in the night sky without warning and need to be studied before they fade.

Sky surveys

Several current and planned sky surveys will record many of these phenomena, and HST is uniquely suited to observe them in detail in the UV or visible wavelengths as they are discovered. Mission operators have even introduced “Flexible Thursdays” into Hubble’s schedule – one Thursday per month is dedicated to planning last-minute observations.

Astronomers are also teaching Hubble new tricks. Operators recently figured out how to use one of its instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, to combine information about the spectra and polarization of light from celestial objects, yielding new insights into their nature.

Hubble to observe nearby galaxies

In the coming years, much attention will be focused on coordinating HST and JWST observations to get a more complete picture of cosmic phenomena. This could mean, for example, using Hubble to observe nearby galaxies that resemble those captured by JWST in the distant universe, to create a timeline of galactic evolution, or to jointly study the atmospheres of exoplanets, which Hubble has a long history of exploring.

“The power of both of these observatories greatly increases our ability to understand all these areas of astrophysics,” says Jennifer Wiseman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Hubble’s principal scientist. “Now is the time to use these facilities to their full potential.”

How long Hubble has left is unknown. “If I asked you when your car is going to break down, you’d have no idea, and that’s kind of the world we’re in,” says Jim Jeletic, Hubble’s deputy program manager at the Goddard Center.

Launched in 1990 by astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery, Hubble has needed improvements over the years. Astronauts visited it five times between 1993 and 2009, first to repair a mirror defect that caused blurry vision and then to upgrade its scientific instruments to keep it on the cutting edge of astronomy. “This keeps Hubble as a new observatory time and time again,” says Wiseman. However, NASA retired the shuttle in 2011 and has no plans to operate the telescope again.

Operators are also looking for smarter ways to operate the telescope to extend its life. For example, engineers changed the way Hubble communicates with satellites to transmit data to Earth. Instead of using the telescope’s onboard transponders in many short bursts, mission controllers now collect more data on the telescope before sending a chunk of data at a time. Turning transponders on and off less frequently extends their lifespan.

Surface of our planet

Another long-term question is how long the Hubble can stay high enough to escape the drag of the Earth’s atmosphere, which lowers it in height and eventually destroys it. In the past, the telescope orbited up to 615 kilometers above the surface of our planet; it is currently at 535 kilometers, where it is expected to remain until approximately the mid-2030s

However, if the Sun reaches its predicted maximum activity in 2025, solar storms could hasten the Hubble’s demise. So NASA and the Hawthorne, Calif.-based aerospace company SpaceX are studying whether they can attach a SpaceX capsule to Hubble and send it into a higher orbit.

That would give NASA more time to figure out how to dispose of the telescope at the end of its life by guiding it down into the ocean. The results of the orbital enhancement study have not yet been released.

Jeletic says “We believe we will be able to keep Hubble making unique and great scientific discoveries and observations until the end of this decade, if not the next”. In the meantime, there’s plenty to do. Although Hubble has made more than 1.5 million observations in its lifetime, it has looked at less than one-tenth of one percent of the sky.

Reference : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00136-8

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