Counting Down to the Hubble Rescue

Hubble lovers around the world have pinned their hopes on the shuttle mission launching Monday from the Kennedy Space Center – making its fifth and final visit to the space telescope.

Hubble is the one telescope everyone knows, and its spectacular images are downloaded daily. Hubble is the comeback kid of telescopes. Launched in 1990 — over budget and behind schedule — to great fanfare, it immediately became a late night joke when it turned out the telescope’s mirror had problems which caused blurred images.

Hubble, 19 years old now, overcame its early problems, and the rest is history - history that has changed what we know about the universe, and history that won’t end soon, thanks to a long-overdue house call to repair and upgrade the venerable orbiting observatory.

Preston Burch, Hubble’s project manager, says his team has been working around the clock to get ready for this. “This is the last chance to make Hubble the best it can be, we will almost have completely rebuilt Hubble since it was launched. We will also install a soft capture mechanism to deorbit Hubble in the future.”

 

NASA Mission Risky, Once Controversial

A space shuttle mission to Hubble is considered risky because there is no safe haven - if something goes wrong on a mission to the international space station, the crew can hang out at the space station until a rescue vehicle comes to get them.

A shuttle at the Hubble has no place to find refuge - so NASA came up with a plan to have a second shuttle standing by ready to go if something breaks on Atlantis that can’t be repaired in orbit.

The fifth mission to service the Hubble was scrapped after the 2003 accident that doomed the crew of the space shuttle Columbia. Then NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said it was much too dangerous.

“Could we do this and take the risk? Sure, but somebody else would have to make that decision not me, because I’m not doing it,” O’Keefe said.

That someone was the next NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin.

“We studied it for 18 months and decided we could do this with no more risk than we ask of our astronauts on a space station flight – it was not a trivial undertaking. It wasn’t that I snapped my fingers and reversed my predecessors’ decision; we studied it for 18 months. But we did find a way. That at the end of the day - that’s what is key; we found a way to do it safely.”

NASA Mission Will Extend Hubble’s Lifetime by 5 or 6 Years

It’s been seven years since Hubble has been serviced, and it is in sad shape. It needs new batteries, its gyroscopes are failing, its main camera isn’t working at full capacity, and several other instruments are broken.

Astronauts, on five grueling back-to-back spacewalks, will perform very delicate repairs on electronics, some that were never meant to be replaced on orbit.

Three months after the mission ends the astronauts will know if their work paid off when the first pictures will be seen from the newly refurbished telescope.

Prospecting for Uranium–In the Grand Canyon

The Bureau of Land Management has authorized several new uranium exploration permits near the Grand Canyon despite a congressional resolution last year barring new claims near the national park.

According to documents released yesterday [pdf] by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Grand Canyon Trust, BLM on April 27 authorized Quaterra Alaska Inc. to conduct eight uranium mine exploration operations at five separate projects north of Grand Canyon National Park and west of the Kaibab Plateau.

“Our understanding is that exploration can begin immediately,” said Taylor McKinnon, director of CBD’s public lands program.

Quaterra Alaska is a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Quaterra Resources Inc.

All of the projects are within the 1 million acres of BLM and Forest Service land that the House Natural Resources Committee ordered to be withdrawn from new uranium mining claims in June 2008, according to the groups.

The committee employed its rarely used emergency declaration authority to withdraw the lands, but then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne rejected the panel’s request, saying the committee did not have a quorum on the vote, which was taken after Republicans walked out in protest, arguing that there was no emergency to prompt the move.

The department also disputed the committee’s authority under the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act to issue emergency withdrawals and later issued a new rule that limited its ability to carry out such orders.

Michael Taylor, deputy director of resources at BLM’s Arizona state office, disputed the groups’ claims that this action authorized new drilling operations.

He explained that the documents reflect the company’s shift in reclamation bond funds from one set of exploration sites that the company was no longer interested in exploring to the new set of sites that were not previously bonded. “It was a transfer of bonding money between the notices,” Taylor said. “There is no on-the-ground exploration authorized.”

Describing the action as a “paper shuffle,” Taylor said the company has not given any indication that it plans to explore the newly bonded sites and that the agency has not authorized any new exploration permits. “We haven’t done anything out there, anything that would be contrary to what the committee had requested,” he said.

But Richard Mayol, director of communications and government affairs for the Grand Canyon Trust, said the transfer still constitutes a new authorization. “The fact they shifted the bonding to these sites means they can begin this exploration drilling,” he said.

The trust and CBD, along with the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit against Interior last fall to force it to comply with the committee’s order. 

While the case has yet to go to court, McKinnon said the groups were not informed of BLM’s authorizations, and that he was unsure how they would affect the lawsuit.

Earlier this year, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) reintroduced legislation to bar uranium development near the Grand Canyon, noting that new mining near the park could contaminate regional water systems. 

Grijalva had introduced the legislation last year but faced serious opposition from Bush administration officials and Republicans, who said the bill would hurt local economies, prompting the Arizona Democrat to push for the committee’s emergency withdrawal.

He said in January that he would work to convince Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to reconsider the temporary withdrawal while he pushes his legislation. Salazar has not spoken publicly about the issue since taking office.

“This is an indication that the BLM needs leadership from the new administration,” said CBD’s McKinnon. “The Grand Canyon example highlights the need for change.”

Department of Energy Favors Renewables, Cuts Yucca Mountain

The Obama administration solidified its plans today to kill the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository while seeking new increases for science and renewable-energy programs in a proposed $26.4 billion Energy Department budget for fiscal 2010.

The total proposal is essentially flat compared to current DoE funding. But that does not include nearly $40 billion showered on the department from the stimulus law for alternative-energy and efficiency initiatives.

The White House’s budget summaries cite $38.7 billion in stimulus cash steered to and through DoE in 2009-2010. DoE has already made several funding announcements and solicitations in areas such as science and biofuels.

Instead of funding Yucca Mountain, the proposed budget would provide almost $197 million for exploring alternatives to the proposed Nevada waste site. All funding for Yucca development would end, the White House says, because President Obama has “made clear that the nation needs a better solution” for disposing high-level nuclear waste.

“Such a solution must be based on sound science and capable of securing broad support, including support from those who live in areas that might be affected by the solution,” the White House said in a document outlining proposed cuts. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is forming a “blue ribbon” commission to weigh nuclear-waste solutions.

The budget proposal does help continue the Yucca licensing proceeding before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But DoE has called this a way to help understand NRC’s views on radiation standards and other issues, not an effort to proceed with Yucca.

Overall, the budget would increase funding for a many renewable-energy and efficiency programs. The budget requests $2.32 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Solar energy programs in that office would see a major boost, receiving $320 million, while programs including wind, building and industrial efficiency, advanced vehicle technologies and others would also receive boosts.

Specific proposed funding levels include $75 million for wind energy; $235 million for bio-energy; and $334 million for vehicle technologies.

Science, nuclear

The proposal also increases funding for the Office of Science, which Chu has said will be a top priority.

The plan would provide $4.94 billion for the office, boosting programs in basic energy sciences and other areas. The current-year funding is $4.77 billion, although the stimulus also provided $1.6 billion for this year.

Elsewhere, the plan would trim spending on nuclear energy research programs somewhat, proposing $762 million, compared with $792 million in current year spending.

The plan seeks to phase out the Nuclear Power 2010 program, a cost-share partnership with industry to help navigate the nuclear power plant licensing process as the sector seeks to build the first new reactors in decades. The budget would provide $20 million and notes there is evidence that the program has helped promote interest in new reactors, citing 17 applications NRC has received to build 26 new reactors.

The proposal also would end funding for the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative.

The plan boosts funding, however, for the Generation IV program that supports multinational research and development for next-generation reactors and also would increase funding for fuel-cycle research and development within DoE’s nuclear energy office.

In another area, the proposed budget would provide almost $5.5 billion in new appropriations for DoE’s environmental cleanup programs to address contamination from Cold War nuclear weapons production. Those programs also received more than $5 billion in the stimulus law.

Reduced spending for ‘clean coal’ research

The White House spending plan cuts funding for DoE’s fossil-energy program, directing funds toward “clean coal” projects and eliminating spending for oil technology research.

The 2010 proposal of $618 million is significantly less than 2009 spending. But the program received an additional $3.4 billion in stimulus funds earlier this year.

The spending plan completely cuts funding for the oil research and development program on grounds that the private-sector oil industry should pay for the technology developments that provide little public benefit. The Obama administration also proposes to end funding to the mandatory oil and gas R&D program authorized by the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

This year’s spending plan is focused on carbon capture and storage technologies and gas hydrate research.

Proposed repeal of oil-industry tax breaks

White House budget documents re-emphasize Obama’s proposals to end billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks – plans that face stiff resistance on Capitol Hill from oil-state Democrats and most Republicans.

The biggest proposal would end the oil and gas industry’s ability to claim the Section 199 domestic-manufacturing deduction, worth an estimated $13.3 billion over a decade. Overall, the plan would end more than $26 billion in industry incentives over a decade.

“The oil and gas subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices,” the White House says in a document listing programs the administration wants to end.

NASA may not get astronauts back to the moon by 2020 after all

NASA’s stated goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020, which received a tentative boost in February with an affirmation in President Barack Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2010, is reportedly now in danger.

According to a report in the Orlando Sentinelquoting unnamed NASA engineers and contractors, the space agency’s timelines “are quietly being revised” in light of ongoing technical and budgetary problems. That revision, engineers told the newspaper, means the “2020 date to send humans back to the moon is in deepening trouble.”

The agency has pushed back by two years its internal timeline for the scheduled moon launch of Ares V, a planned heavy-cargo carrier rocket, according to theSentinel report. NASA had reportedly tagged the Ares V with a 2018 internal target—which builds in leeway for unforeseen problems—for a lunar launch, while announcing a 2020 date to the public. Grey Hautaluoma, a spokesperson for NASA, declined to comment on the Sentinel story. “We won’t have any comment about our budgets and schedules until the 2010 budget is released next month,” Hautaluoma said.

The Ares V rocket is designed to be unmanned but will play a role in planned astronaut missions to the moon by delivering the Earth departure stage and lunar lander to Earth orbit for rendezvous with a separately launched crewed spacecraft. With the internal timeline for its moon shot now reportedly set to 2020, there is little room for error if NASA is to meet its stated target. 

One contractor told the Sentinel that an announcement of the delay by Kennedy Space Center officials “was not received with enthusiasm” by his group. Any delays will likely exacerbate job losses at Kennedy and elsewhere along Florida’s “Space Coast,” where the shuttle program has fueled the space industry for three decades. Without intervention from Washington, the space shuttle program will be shut for good down next year, and its replacement, the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule, will not be ready before 2015.

Mystery Object Spotted in the Early Universe

Looking deep into the sky—and, by extension, far back in time—astronomers have spotted a curious space blob that existed when the universe was only 800 million years old, about 6 percent of its present age.

Masami Ouchi, a fellow at The Observatories of the Carnegie Institutionin Pasadena, Calif., who led the researchreported in the May 10 issue of theAstrophysical Journal, says that the luminous gas cloud, which spans some 55,000 light-years (about half the diameter of the Milky Way), is unique for its time. “There are no extended objects found at such an early epoch,” he says. Other known objects in its class, called Lyman-alpha blobs, are from somewhat more recent history, Ouchi says—at least two billion to three billion years after the big bang.

Lyman-alpha blobs are an astronomical mystery that may be primordial galaxies. “The consensus is that these are enormous protogalaxies, which over the course of time will yield very massive old galaxies such as we see in the local universe,” says Dan Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in England. Smith, who was not involved in the study, calls the detection of such an early Lyman-alpha blob “a very exciting result.”

But as of now, it is not known what Lyman-alpha blobs are or what causes them to glow. Resolving the proposed explanations for these early objects could shed light on how galaxies such as the Milky Way take shape. Some theories hold that Lyman-alpha blobs are formed byinflows of cold streams of gas, a mechanism that Smith points out has recently been suggested by some researchers as the dominant mode of galaxy growth. Other explanations posit that the blobs’ gas emits radiation due to heating by an active galactic nucleus harboring a churning object such as a supermassive black hole or by an accelerated phase of star formation known as a starburst.

The Lyman-alpha blob has been dubbed Himiko, after a queen in ancient Japan. “I found the name of Himiko is very suitable,” Ouchi says, “given the fact that this object was discovered in an ancient universe [by] the Subaru Telescope,” which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.