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Hubble Alternatives

The NRC Committee convened to evaluate options for extending (or not) the life of the Hubble Space Telescope holds its first meeting later this week. The Committee is expected to issue a report by fall, but NASA may make a decision on Hubble by next month.

In 2001 we held a NASA-sponsored workshop to consider and evaluate alternative for extending (or not) the life of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM). The Workshop was organized to address the following issue:

“In the near future NASA faces an important decision about the termination of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM). There are at least two alternatives, each with potentially significant consequences for science and society. One alternative is for NASA to de-orbit TRMM in a controlled fashion, virtually eliminating any risks to human life and property associated with an uncontrolled reentry. However, this would reduce TRMM’s potential scientific data-gathering lifetime, which would reduce the benefits of that data to meteorological research and operations, particularly related to tropical cyclone forecasts. Another alternative is for NASA to extend TRMM’s orbital lifetime, preserving the availability of the unique data collected by TRMM for research and operational meteorological forecasting, but increasing to an unknown extent the risks associated with TRMM’s eventual reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. There are possibly other alternatives that involve similar trade-offs.

What course of action should NASA take?”

The issues, at least conceptually and politically, are very similar to those faced in the Hubble situation, if at a much lower level of saliency. How we grappled with these issues can be found here.