chongo@nsc.uucp (Curt Noll) (09/01/83)
does anyony know what the status of the space telescope is? chongo /\../\
Hans.Moravec%CMU-RI-ROVER@sri-unix.UUCP (01/21/84)
n522 0048 21 Jan 84
BC-SPACE-2takes-01-21
ADVANCE FOR SUNDAY
By Albert Sehlstedt Jr.
(c) 1984 The Baltimore Sun (Independent Press Service)
WASHINGTON - The ailing space telescope project, conceived by
astronomers to explore the far reaches of the universe but hobbled by
cost overruns, management problems and technical gaffes, is now
pointed in the right direction for a mid-1986 launching.
That is the ''cautious optimistic'' view of Dr. Edward J. Weiler, an
astrophysicist and executive at the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration who is riding herd on a team of scientists and
engineers charged with making the 10-ton telescope work.
James E. Welch, another NASA boss who is overseeing the management
side of the $1.1 billion program, scid ''Our target date is 1 June,
1986, and I don't see anything right now that would cause us to
change that estimate.'' On that date one of the space shuttles is to
carry the telescope to an orbit 320 miles above the atmosphere and
leave it there for a decade or more of astronomical research.
Neither man is congratulating himself at this stage, 10 months after
a House subcommittee pointed to a list of management and technical
problems - and cost increases - that NASA and its contractors have
encountered in the development of the unique instrument.
For example, the original cost for the design, development and
construction of the telescope assembly has soared from a 1976
estimate of $69 million to more than $160 million, according to data
compiled by the House panel, chaired by Rep. Edward P. Boland (D-
Mass.)
Over-all, the cost of the entire program has risen from a 1978
estimate of $435 million to between $1.1 and $1.2 billion today,
according to Welch. And those figures do not include the cost of
launching the telescope.
Without making excuses for past mistakes, Weiler and Welch point out
that the telescope represents an immensely difficult scientific and
engineering endeavor fraught with unknown or unanticipated problems
because it was pushing the ''state of the art'' from its inception.
''We're not building carburetors for Hondas,'' said Weiler. ''Space
telescope represents the single biggest leap in optical capability
since Galileo put his eye to the telescope,'' he said.
And still ahead is the demanding task of integrating the
43-foot-long device with an array of scientific instruments that will
operate in concert with the 94.5-inch primary mirror to help
interpret the hieroglyphics of the cosmos for astronomers from around
the world.
(Astronomers will ''look'' through the telescope electronically,
viewing images of the stars and galaxies transmitted from Earth orbit
to the Space Telescope Science Institute on the Homewood campus of
Johns Hopkins University.)
Another important job facing NASA and its industrial contractors
involves mating the telescope assembly to the metal housing that will
support the scientific package in space.
''We're now getting to the unknown unknowns, and this late in the
program that can really ring your bell,'' Welch said with the joy of
a man half way across a rickety bridge.
An embarrassing problem that seems mercifully behind the NASA
executives involves one of those seemingly obvious precautions that
would occur to any thoughtful seventh-grader working on his first
science project at the Catonsville Middle School.
After polishing the telescope's primary mirror to an almost
unbelievable smoothness with a computer-controlled technique, the
contractor let it get dusty. Smoothness is to telescope mirrors as
youth is to fashion models. And dust equals wrinkles - it detracts
from the overall impression.
The mirror contractor, the widely respected but sometimes tardy
Perkin-Elmer Corporation of Norwalk, Conn., plans to turn the
polished surface up-side-down later this yeap and carefully go over
it with a jet stream of nitrogen gas to remove the dust particles, or
most of them.
''Hopefully, most of the large particles will be blown off,'' Weiler
said. ''It is the larger particles that give you the most problems.''
There was a management problem here, too.
Welch pointed out that the understanding with Perkin-Elmer called
for the mirror to be ''visibly clean,'' a term subject to different
interpretations by different people.
However, Weiler indicated that too much emphasis can be put on
mirror cleanliness because nothing is perfectly clean, including the
space environment where the telescope will operate.
''You needn't clean the mirror on the ground to a point where it
will be cleaner than in space,'' Weiler observed.
Another technical problem has involved 27 latches on the telescope
assembly that hold various instruments, such as the wide-field camera
and the faint-object camera, in the right position.
Latches are, after all, just latches, except these latches must be
stiff enough to endure the vibrations of a rocket launching, hold up
under the stresses of space operations, and keep the cameras and
other delicate devices in place with an accuracy ''on the order of
microns,'' to use Weiler's words. (A micron is an invisible fraction
of an inch.)
To meet these requirements, the latches have had to be redesigned
and strengthened.
The latches are a necessary part of the assembly because space
shuttle astronauts will fly up to the orbiting telescope from time to
time to remove malfunctioning instruments or replace some of them
with with more advanced models.
Another problem has involved slippage in the schedule for
development of the telescope's fine guidance sensors that keep it
pointed in the right direction by locking on to guide stars in the
heavens. (This operation is analgous to a boater guiding his craft
over the waves of the Chesapeake by keeping his eye upon landmarks on
the shore.)
Perkin-Elmer has now assembled the first prototype of a
fine-guidance sensor, Weiler said, and ''it has exceeded
specifications.''
''That gave us all quite a nice Christmas,'' he added.
On the human side, Weiler conceded the telescope program had
suffered from a lack of good communication up and down the line,
adding that the astronomers and other scientists associated wivh the
program also felt they were not getting through to the managers.
''The scientists really felt their voices weren't being heard,'' he
said.
As a consequence, he asked each space telescope scientist last
February to list the problems he or she saw in the program.
''I was shocked by the enormous response I got.'' he said.
Another problem with the telescope project stems from the fact that
it is big-time science.
In the past, NASA headquarters has largely left the management of
space science projects to the agency's ''centers'' (branch offices)
around the country which worked closel with university researchers
and contractors in preparing various missions to the moon and planets.
Conversely, the headquarters people here have always kept very close
tabs on the more costly, and more visible, manned space flight
programs, such as the lunar landings and the space shuttle flights,
exercising many management prerogatives from Washington.
But the space telescope is entirely new.
The old ways didn't work.
In managing complex programs like this, Welch observed after 15
years of triumphs and flops at the Pentagon, ''you learn how to
succeeed by failing.''
''When space telescope is finally launched,'' Weiler said, ''it will
work better than anybody expected.''
END
nyt-01-21-84 0330est
***************rabahy%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (10/30/84)
From: rabahy%castor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (David Rabahy) Associated Press Tue 30-OCT-1984 00:05 Space Telescope Late, Over Budget, Oversized, Space Telescope Leaves Connecticut DANBURY, Conn. (AP) - Oversized and over its budget, a giant telscope began its journey to California on Monday, where it is schduled to be installed in a spacecraft and launched by a space shuttle in the summer of 1986. State police escorted the telescope, which rode on a flatbed truck, to Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, N.Y., on the first leg of its trip. Aside from some minor traffic problems caused partially by the load's 16-foot width, it arrived without incident. From the Air Force base, it is scheduled to be flown to the Lockheed Corp. in Sunnyvale, Calif., and installed on a Lockheed-built spacecraft. The space telescope, built by Perkin Elmer Corp., had been delayed for more than a year and cost about $600 million more than anticipated. Originally budgeted at $475 million, costs are projected to reach about $1.2 billion by the time the telescope is launched. As costs escalated and the project fell behind schedule, Congress and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration investigated. But NASA finally sided with Perkin-Elmer, saying it had underestimated the difficulty of building such an instrument. Built at a Perkin-Elmer Corp.'s optical division plant in Danbury, the telescope was designed to observe objects seven times farther away than telescopes on Earth. It is about 33 feet long and 10 feet in diameter. Once set in orbit about 310 miles above Earth, the telescope should be active for about 15 years, according to company officials.
alan@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Alan Algustyniak) (11/06/84)
AW&ST also used the term 'will be able to see 7 times farther' when it recently described the status of the Small Space Telescope. Will someone who is knowledgable about this please put this is meaningful terms? Does this mean that, because of the absence of atmosphere and the length of time it can point at an object, it can detect light about one-third as intense as can presently be detected with the best ground instruments? If not, what does it mean? BTW, Science mag, recenty reporting on its status, stated that it is designed to be refurbished in space not less than every 5 years, but that present plans for America's manned space station won't allow for it to be refurbished until 7 years after it is up. sdcrdcf!alan
markf%Nosc@usiiden.ARPA (07/30/85)
From: <crash!usiiden!markf@Nosc> The space telescope planned for launch in the near future will have two tubes on it, a red and a blue tube, according to one of the technicians on the project. This sounds like it may have something to do with red shift and blue shift. Can anyone confirm this?
jc@saber.UUCP (John Cincotta) (08/02/85)
> From: <crash!usiiden!markf@Nosc> > > The space telescope planned for launch in the near future > will have two tubes on it, a red and a blue tube, according > to one of the technicians on the project. This sounds > like it may have something to do with red shift and blue > shift. Can anyone confirm this? *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** i just last night looked at an article in sky and tell about the space teliscope and it implyed that there were two "digicons" on the two spectrographs that had different sensitive elements on them (bi vs tri alkali) i seem to recall that this makes one sensitive into the ir ant the other is good into the uv John Cincotta Saber Tech san jose 408 945 9600 voice
rxb@rayssdb.UUCP (Richard A. Brooks) (10/04/86)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
Is there anyone out there that knows details on
the Space Telescope (ST)? My questions are :
(1) Will the transmissions from the ST be PUBLIC
DOMAIN? (free to be recieved by anyone with
the satellite equipment to pick them up)
(2) Will the transmissions be scrambled or encrypted
in any way to prevent interception? (other than
encoding necessary to send the video data to
earth)
(3) What Image Processing equipment would be required
to obtain a suitable input to a PC or VCR.
(4) If the answers to the above are favorable, does
anyone have projects in the works to do this?
I would be extremely grateful for any help. The ST is
about the only thing going up that would make it worth
getting a satellite reciever, Who needs HBO when you
can watch the STARS!!!
--
Richard Brooks {allegra, gatech, ihnp4, linus, raybed2}!rayssd!rayssdb!rxb
Raytheon
Submarine Signal Division Have Submarine Will Travel
Portsmouth, Rhode Island
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smithjwp@uwmacc.UUCP (Jeffrey W Percival) (10/09/86)
In article <1322@rayssdb.UUCP> rxb@rayssdb.UUCP (Richard A. Brooks) writes: > > (1) Will the transmissions from the ST be PUBLIC DOMAIN? > (2) Will the transmissions be scrambled or encrypted > (3) What Image Processing equipment would be required > (4) Does anyone have projects in the works to do this? The HST will transmit its data at one of 2 rates (4 kbits/sec and 1 Mbit/sec) to a TDRS satellite, which will forward the data to White Sands. Thence they go to the east coast via DomSat, to be recieved at the data capture facility at Goddard. Processing is done there, as well as sending the signal via microwave link to the Science Institute in Baltimore. Before leaving the HST, the data have Reed-Solomon encoding performed on them, and then whatever blocking is required for the NASCOM transmission process. I don't know much more in the way of details, but it seems to me that it would require a bunch of effort to eavesdrop. We had a thermal vacuum test at Lockheed this summer, with the HST at times being commanded remotely from Goddard, and I know that at times, even *they* were quite pleased to get some data. -- Jeff Percival ...!uwvax!uwmacc!sal70!jwp or ...!uwmacc!jwp
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (10/09/86)
> (1) Will the transmissions from the ST be PUBLIC > DOMAIN? (free to be recieved by anyone with > the satellite equipment to pick them up) My understanding is that they are technically private. Space Telescope data is the property of the investigator for some relatively short period (six months? two years?) and then becomes public domain. This is intended to protect things like publication rights while making sure that the results eventually become available to everyone. Eavesdropping on the ST should thus fall under the general rule that radio transmissions not intended for public broadcast may be listened to but may not be passed on to others. (Note that various bits of legislation like local anti-scanner laws and the recent obnoxious anti-interception bill in Congress may modify this.) > (2) Will the transmissions be scrambled or encrypted > in any way to prevent interception? (other than > encoding necessary to send the video data to > earth) The transmission encoding probably isn't going to be trivial, but I don't think there is any plan to deliberately encrypt. > (3) What Image Processing equipment would be required > to obtain a suitable input to a PC or VCR. Basically you'd need something to capture the digital data coming down -- I think the ST transmissions will be all-digital -- into memory or a storage medium. After that, output onto a screen should be trivial, and onto a VCR will involve no more than the normal problems of transferring a computer-generated image to a VCR. The hard part will be deciphering the transmission in the first place, since the ST people probably haven't worried much about being compatible with existing standards. I'd also be surprised if they were using commercial-satellite frequencies, although the relay from White Sands to Goddard may. > ...Who needs HBO when you can watch the STARS!!! Bear in mind that most of the ST data is going to be exceptionally dull except to the astronomer who's waiting for it. Pictures of random star fields will pall quickly. It may be difficult to get sufficiently detailed advance information to pick interesting observing times. I believe the ST's slew rate is rather slow, also, so it will be "in transit" from one viewing direction to another quite a bit. Finally, note that only two of the five sensors aboard the ST are cameras; data from the others is going to be *really* uninteresting to the casual observer. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry
jwp@uwmacc.UUCP (Jeffrey W Percival) (10/10/86)
Here's another complication. The ST's High Speed Photometer can sample the intensity of incoming light in several ways: a 12-bit a/d conversion of a photocurrent, and a readout of a photon counting device with either 8, 16, or 24 bit word size. What's more, we can alternate between 2 internal detectors. Our data stream can be quite complex: detector 1 "analog", detector 1 "digital", then repeat for detector 2, back to detector 1, and so on. And the information describing the interleaving is not part of the downlinked data. You'd have to try and figure it out on a case by case basis by staring at the numbers. Whew! -- Jeff Percival ...!uwvax!uwmacc!sal70!jwp or ...!uwmacc!jwp
news@husc6.HARVARD.EDU (USENET News System) (10/12/86)
The data from ST observations will be the property of the astronomer (Principal Investigator) for ONE YEAR. At that time it all becomes public-domain info. From: mmiller@husc4.harvard.edu (Martin Miller) Path: husc4!mmiller As others have said, it will all be unbelievably dull, except in its final, published form. If anyone is interested, there are rumors afoot of an Amateur Space Telescope, I believe a 24 inch to be launched in the 1990s, which will actually transmit its data on ham radio frequencies. I'd tell you more about it except that I threw the brochure away. Tony Lazar STScI, Baltimore