Taking pictures of a shuttle with hubble?

Hi,

Don't laugh yet ;-)

I'm not suggesting taking pictures of the Shuttle with Hubble because
it's a 2.4 meter telescope!

But, there must be star tracking equipement and such without much
magnification. So, would it be possible for Hubble to take pictures of
the shuttle on flight day 2 or 3, with some of this tracking
equipement?

But thinking about it, what would prevent Hubble from snapping a
picture anyway? A shuttle a few hundred meters away would be about as
big as the full moon, and they did take a few shots of it:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/new...eases/1999/14/

What are your thoughts? Wouldn't it fit into the "ASAP imaging"
post-launch requirement?

(Remy Villeneuve) wrote in
om:

But thinking about it, what would prevent Hubble from snapping a
picture anyway? A shuttle a few hundred meters away would be about as
big as the full moon, and they did take a few shots of it:

The shuttle is never going to a HST orbit again, so will never be "a few
hundred meters away".

For the shuttle in the same orbit as the space station, the closest
approach would be about 130 km. With a relative movement of several degrees
per second! No ways is HST capable of traversing that fast to target the
shuttle. Besides, such close encounters would only occur every couple
*years*. Plus, the shuttle would be towards earth from the HST. Pointing
the optics at an illuminated earth is a BIG no-no. Waiting for a nighttime
encounter would be equally pointless, as a shuttle in shadow is a bit hard
to see.

The shuttle is never going to a HST orbit again, so will never be "a few
hundred meters away".

I think the service mission will be restored, but thats just me.

"Hallerb" wrote in message
...

The shuttle is never going to a HST orbit again, so will never be "a few
hundred meters away".

I think the service mission will be restored, but thats just me.

Would it be possible to send up a couple Soyuz and/or Progress to do the
repair mission, one for the crew, one for supplies?

In message , Marvin
writes
(Remy Villeneuve) wrote in
. com:

But thinking about it, what would prevent Hubble from snapping a
picture anyway? A shuttle a few hundred meters away would be about as
big as the full moon, and they did take a few shots of it:

The shuttle is never going to a HST orbit again, so will never be "a few
hundred meters away".

For the shuttle in the same orbit as the space station, the closest
approach would be about 130 km. With a relative movement of several degrees
per second! No ways is HST capable of traversing that fast to target the
shuttle. Besides, such close encounters would only occur every couple
*years*. Plus, the shuttle would be towards earth from the HST. Pointing
the optics at an illuminated earth is a BIG no-no.

Minor nitpick, but that isn't so. HST's sensors have no problem with a
source as bright as the Earth.
But there are other telescopes in space, which do have the ability to
track fast-moving objects, and they were used to image Columbia on its
first flight.
--
Save the Hubble Space Telescope!
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

John Doe wrote:

Marvin wrote:

the optics at an illuminated earth is a BIG no-no. Waiting for a nighttime
encounter would be equally pointless, as a shuttle in shadow is a bit hard
to see.


Shirley Hubble is equipped with a very bright light ? How else coudl it
illuminate the galaxy so it can be seen ? :-)

Who is Shirley Hubble?

--
bp
Proud Member of the Human O-Ring Society Since 2003

Marvin wrote:
the optics at an illuminated earth is a BIG no-no. Waiting for a nighttime
encounter would be equally pointless, as a shuttle in shadow is a bit hard
to see.

Shirley Hubble is equipped with a very bright light ? How else coudl it
illuminate the galaxy so it can be seen ? :-)


When Hubble takes a snapshot of some very distant galaxy, how does it align
itself, considering it is in constant movement around earth ? Does it have the
ability to rotate so precisely that it can maintain a fixed attitude relative
to the rest of the galaxy ? Or must it take a rapid snapshot at the very
instant its rotation aroudn earth makes it point at the desired target ?

Wouldn't it be simpler for the ISS to equip itself with a spy satellite
(relabeled into a civilian model) so it could take very high resolution
photograpsh of shuttle during its first day or two of orbits (at lower
altitude than ISS) ? Doesn't the Shuttle lap the ISS a couple of times before
it raises itself to same altitude ?

"Bootstrap Bill" wrote in message
...

"Hallerb" wrote in message
...

The shuttle is never going to a HST orbit again, so will never be "a
few
hundred meters away".

I think the service mission will be restored, but thats just me.

Would it be possible to send up a couple Soyuz and/or Progress to do the
repair mission, one for the crew, one for supplies?


The shuttle payload bay has dimensions 15x60ft (4.6x18.3m)
and has a maximum payload weight of approx 50,000lbs (22,680kg)

A Soyuz TM is 7m long, 2.7m diameter and weighs about 7 tons.

So.... on a shuttle HST servicing mission why not just load up 2 x Soyuz
into the orbiter payload bay? In the unlikely event of the shuttle
being damaged on the way to orbit you have an ISS style lifeboat
facilty for 6 astronauts.

The problem of imaging the heat shield and RCC wing sections is surely
much easier to solve than developing an in orbit repair capability.

I'm sure I must be missing something, but I'm not sure what!

Andy

Andy Long wrote:

The shuttle payload bay has dimensions 15x60ft (4.6x18.3m)
and has a maximum payload weight of approx 50,000lbs (22,680kg)

A Soyuz TM is 7m long, 2.7m diameter and weighs about 7 tons.

So.... on a shuttle HST servicing mission why not just load up 2 x Soyuz
into the orbiter payload bay? In the unlikely event of the shuttle
being damaged on the way to orbit you have an ISS style lifeboat
facilty for 6 astronauts.

A couple of obstacles: current production versions of Soyuz feature a
docking mechanism that is incompatible with the shuttle, although at least
one has flown with a suitable system, and more could be flown in that
configuration, but you'd have to specify it well in advance.

The second issue is that, when you load two Soyuz into the shuttle with the
docking port, there's no room left for any servicing hardware.

I doubt too whether the shuttle could lift two Soyuz to Hubble's orbit. The
shuttle can lift a bit over 50,000lbs to a low altitude,
friendly-inclination orbit. Hubble's orbit has a friendly inclination, but
is very high, and the maximum payload to Hubble's orbit is much less than
50,000lbs.

The problem of imaging the heat shield and RCC wing sections is surely
much easier to solve than developing an in orbit repair capability.

Yes. I can't see why the boom extension for standalone flights is so
difficult to develop compared to station-based solutions.

uninformed speculation
I suspect the cancellation of all non-ISS flights has more to do with RCC
fixes being more troublesome than hoped, so in the event of TPS damage
being discovered, the plan now is to use the station as a safe haven and
abandon the shuttle, at least if they aren't absolutely confident of the
quality of the attempted repair.
/uninformed speculation

--Chris

John Doe wrote:

Shirley Hubble is equipped with a very bright light ? How else coudl it
illuminate the galaxy so it can be seen ? :-)

"stop calling me Shirley"


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