Death Sentence for the Hubble?

New York Times
February 13, 2005

EDITORIAL
Death Sentence for the Hubble?

Sean O'Keefe, the departing administrator of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, has yanked the agency's most important
scientific instrument off life support. His refusal to budget any funds
to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope looks like the
petulant final act of an administrator who made a foolish decision and
then refused to back down in the face of withering criticism from
experts. The only uncertainty is whether the decision to let the Hubble
die prematurely was solely Mr. O'Keefe's or reflects the judgment of
higher-ups in the administration that servicing the Hubble would be a
diversion from the president's long-range program of space exploration.

The Hubble by all accounts has been one of the most productive
instruments in the history of science, largely because periodic
servicing missions by shuttle astronauts have extended its life and
upgraded its instruments. A fifth servicing mission had been planned,
and the new instruments already built, when the Columbia disaster
grounded the three remaining shuttles for repairs. Then, without any
warning, Mr. O'Keefe shocked scientists by announcing that the
servicing mission would be canceled for good because it would be too
risky.

Nothing, it seems, can budge him from that snap judgment. When a
dumbfounded Congress insisted that he seek advice from the National
Academy of Sciences, he reluctantly agreed, but made it clear that
nothing the academy said was apt to change his mind. He urged the
academy instead to focus on ways to extend Hubble's usefulness without
the help of astronauts. As it turned out, a panel of experts assembled
by the academy concluded that there was little chance the robotic
mission favored by Mr. O'Keefe could be mounted in time. The panel
urged instead that astronauts be sent to the rescue. It judged such a
flight only marginally more risky than a flight to the International
Space Station.

Undeterred, Mr. O'Keefe is now blaming the academy for sealing the
Hubble's doom. He still insists that a shuttle flight would be too
risky, mostly because there would be no place to take refuge should
problems arise, and now he complains that a robotic mission would be
impractical as well because the academy dismissed its prospects for
success. So he has wiped the budget clean of all rescue funds except
for a future robotic mission to ensure that Hubble falls out of orbit
safely.

Congress, which declared in a conference report last year that
servicing the Hubble should be one of NASA's highest priorities, needs
to order NASA to keep planning for a rescue mission. Some legislators
may wonder if a servicing mission is worth the effort, given recent
testimony by eminent scientists that they would be reluctant to see
NASA's science programs socked with $1 billion to $2 billion in charges
for the Hubble rescue - a huge sum that would disrupt other
high-priority programs - but would consider $300 million to $400
million acceptable. That bookkeeping issue is a diversion. The
refurbished shuttles will eventually return to flight, and the marginal
cost for sending one to the Hubble would not be prohibitive. Upgrading
the Hubble is probably the most important contribution today's
astronauts could make.