Monthly Archives: July 2011

astronomy news, hubble space telescope, NASA, planetary science

A Million Peeks at Space

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Hubble Makes a Milestone Science Observation

This is an artist's concept of the extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b. It is a "hot Jupiter" class planet orbiting a star that is much hotter than our Sun. Hubble Space Telescope's millionth science observation was trained on this planet to look for the presence of water vapor and to study the planet's atmospheric structure via spectroscopy. Planets with orbits inclined nearly edge-on to Earth can be observed passing in front of and behind their stars. This allows for the planetary atmospheres to be studied by Hubble's spectrometers. Hubble's unique capabilities allow astronomers to do follow-up observations of exoplanets to characterize the composition and structure of their atmospheres. Courtesy NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI)

Telescopes and the many different instruments that can be attached to them are made to look at the sky and ferret out the hidden mysteries, open our eyes to dim, distant objects, and reveal a million things we didn’t know were out there. Your backyard telescope can do this — as can the mightiest scopes on — or off — our planet.

The Hubble Space Telescope made its millionth science observation on July 4th, using a special instrument called a spectroscope to study the light from a planet a thousand light-years away. The planet is called HAT-P-7b, and HST was looking for signatures of water vapor in the planet’s atmosphere.

It does this by looking at the atmosphere of the planet as it passes in front of its star. The light from the star shines through the gaseous envelope around the planet, and the spectral fingerprints of “stuff” (like water vapor) that is in that atmosphere will show up in the data taken by the spectrometer.

Hubble is quite well-equipped to search out such signatures, and its successor — the James Webb Space Telescope — will be even better able to do such observations. This is the kind of science that HST was built to do — and it’s the kind of science that really grabs my imagination.  It’s really quite cool to think that a telescope orbiting our planet can peer across a thousand light-years of space and spy out the merest whiff of chemical signatures in the atmosphere of another planet.  THAT is what makes this milestone so very, very cool!

You know what else I find very cool?  Back when HST was in severe trouble because of its mirror problems, there were people who felt that we’d wasted our money, that the telescope was a bungle. One of them was Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, now chair of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.  She even went so far as to call Hubble a “techno-turkey” and I remember to this day seeing the anger on her face as she did it.  I even quoted her in my book about Hubble (Hubble Vision).

Yet, to her credit, she did step up and champion the cause of repairing the telescope. So, I think it’s cool that we have at least one politician who recognizes the value of science and, as she always points out, the value of inspiring children to become stargazers, scientists, astronauts, and engineering professionals.  I’m glad to see that she is celebrating the millionth observation too — we need many, many more to come.

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By the way, I want to thank the folks at TeachStreet for featuring this blog as one of the Featured Astronomy Blogs. I’ve rambled through their website and they have links to a number really fine writers.

atlantis, musings, NASA, space shuttle

A Lot of “Last Times”

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Countdown to History for the Shuttle Program

he STS-135 crew members arrived at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility about 2:30 p.m. on July 4 for final preparations for space shuttle Atlantis' STS-135 and final mission to the International Space Station. From left are Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett July 4, 2011

Today was the last day that a space shuttle crew will fly in for a mission. The four crew members for STS-135 arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, their aircraft signaled to a stop by ground crew waving American flags.

There are a LOT of “lasts” with this mission. It’s been a long time coming, and each step towards Atlantis’s final flight is the last time that step will be taken.  In May, we saw the rollover of Atlantis from the Orbiter Processing Facility to the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC. It was last such rollover. A few weeks later, Atlantis, mated to her SRBs and tank, rolled out of the VAB for the last time.

In a few days’ time, we’ll witness the last time a shuttle will be revealed during RSS retract. And, the next day, the last liftoff of a shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center will occur.

I know it’s a time of great sadness for people who worked on the space shuttles, and for those of us who followed the flights from Day 1 in 1981. But, in reality, this is the way life is.  Old technology reaches the end of its useful lifetime and it either has to be updated, re-engineered, or replaced.

Many factors went into the decision to stop the shuttle program, some of them were practical, others political. I’m not going to get into a big discussion here about who killed the shuttle program (it wasn’t President Obama, in case you thought that — you have to look further back in presidential history to see who among all the politicoes and policy makers is really responsible) or what will replace it. Perhaps another time. The point I want to make here is that for 30 years, we’ve gone to space with the shuttles. They’ve served an extremely useful purpose. And, if money were no object in this country, I’m quite sure that we’d find ways to extend their lifetimes or, even better, design newer, better shuttles to replace these — much as an airline replaces its older aircraft with newer ones.

But, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen with the shuttles, and so we now must go to space in other ways and find other means to fly to the stars.  It’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of space exploration. In case people have forgotten, NASA (and other space agencies around the world) are still out there studying the stars and planets with space-borne telescopes and planetary probes. The only thing that’s changed is the U.S. human access to space. The shuttles are rolling into history — and that’s as it should be. I hope that as we wave them goodbye, we don’t let this be the last time NASA sends people to space from U.S. soil.