Brightest Gamma Ray Burst yet

A gamma ray burst temporarily blinded the X-ray instruments on the Swift spacecraft in June.  Great rundown from the blog of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  

X-ray astronomers often get teased for getting so few photons, that they name each one as it comes in from space.  ("Photon, I will name you Fred, and treasure you forever.")  But this GRB produced a peak count rate of 143,000 photons per second!  (For 0.2s -- it's a burst after all.)  Incredibly bright.

I like the blog writeup because it profiles a scientist in the process of doing science, and a postdoc scientist rather than some senior guy paraphrasing for the press what his postdoc discovered.  Even better, it mentions that the scientist was out camping with his family, and returned to the lab to find this crazy event waiting for him in the latest data sent down from the telescope.

Hubble Gotchu: The Music Video

The folks at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon wrote a hip-hop music video about the Hubble Space Telescope.   Too catchy.

First light for SOFIA

NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, aka SOFIA, just took its first astronomy images on Wednesday.  SOFIA is a highly modified Boing 747 jet with a telescope poking out of the side, that will fly at 50,000 ft and observe, high above most of the Earth's atmosphere.

SOFIA has been much-delayed  -- I'm sure it's a huge relief to get it working.

 Images courtesy NASA.

2010 Senior Review Report

NASA periodically convenes a "Senior Review" of astronomers to consider all current missions (except Hubble, for political reasons), judge their future prospects, and recommend which ones should be given more money, and which should be axed.  The 2010 report just came out.  Here's the report, a table, and a summary article, via Kelle at Astrobetter:

2010 Senior Review for Operating Missions – NASA Science | 
Results of the most recent Senior Review of NASA’s operating missions. Link to a PDF with comments on each mission at the bottom of the page. Their rank ordering, from highest to lowest: Plank, Chandra, Warm Spitzer, Swift, Newton, WMAP, Suzaku, GALEX, RXTE, INTEGRAL, Warm WISE. (via Adam Kraus) 

A nice article and summary table at Nature News (via John Gizis).

Thank you, astronauts

A snapshot of Drew Feustel (on the robotic arm) and John Grunsfeld (deep inside Hubble's guts). Thank you, Atlantis astronauts, for splendid work refurbishing Hubble, and for risking your lives to advance science.

Lots of space telescope news!

Lots of space telescope news this week:

The Shuttle launched safely on Monday, captured the Hubble Space Telescope on Tuesday, and now astronauts are repairing Hubble. John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel have already removed WFPC2 and installed WFC3 - YAY! They are currently removing the faulty Data Handling Unit.

You can watch the repairs on NASA TV.



Also, Herschel and Planck launched successfully on Thurdsay morning. Herschel is an infrared/submillimeter space telescope, and Planck is a cosmic microwave background experiment.

Finally, No word yet on whether the Spitzer Space Telescope has run out of cryogenic coolant yet -- an event predicted for this week.. Thank, you Spitzer, for 5 years of wonderful science.

Waiting for two launches

Servicing Mission 4 to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is due to launch Monday, May 11 at 2:01pm. The official estimate of the risk from space debris has been lowered to 1-in-221, but the shuttle will still fly tail-first to better shield the spacewalking astronauts, led by astronaut/astronomer John Grunsfeld.

Also, European space telescopes Herschel and Planck are set to launch on Thursday, 14 May from French Guiana. Planck is a Cosmic Microwave Background explorer (meaning it looks at the leftover light from the Big Bang), and Herschel is a far-infrared general-purpose telescope that looks mainly at baby stars in our galaxy, as well as galaxies that are rapidly forming stars.

Fingers crossed and atheist prayers delivered for two clean launches, good spacewalks, and a safe return for Atlantis.

Satellite debris could cancel Hubble repair mission

Nature.com is reporting that debris from a recent satellite-satellite collision may prevent the upcoming (desperately needed) shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

"Kaputnik chaos could kill Hubble", from nature.com
"Satellite collision puts Hubble at risk", from abcnews.com

Hubble repair mission delayed to Feb 2009

As you may have heard, a key control system on the Hubble Space Telescope failed Saturday. It may be possible, though laborious, to switch to a redundant backup that's been turned off for the past 18 years. However, switching to the backup means you don't have a backup anymore, and you know how NASA likes redundancy. As a result, NASA has delayed the Hubble repair mission from Oct 14 to mid-February 2009 at the earliest.

Some of that delay is for the engineers to figure out how to repair/replace the failed unit. (Apparently there's a spare in a closet.) Some of that delay is to train astronauts in the new repair (Go John Grunsfeld, go!) But most is because of two strange, crazy notions in which NASA, despite all the evidence, still believes. They are:

• The International Space Station is NOT a colossal boondoggle we'll dump in the ocean as soon as it's done. Rather, it is vitally important to prove that humans can build pointless space stations in space. Even if it delays fixing Hubble, the one shining achievement of manned spaceflight in the last 20 yrs.
  
• Keeping a backup shuttle ready on the launchpad makes the Space Shuttle safer. One Shuttle: one-in-fifty chance of catastrophe. Two Shuttle: safe.

Just bitter, sorry.
Links: NYT article; Steinn's wrap-up; Julianne's take

On Hubble and late-season baseball trades

Astronauts are scheduled to visit the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2008 to perform "Servicing Mission 4" (SM4). They'll replace the gyroscopes and batteries, swap out the fine guidance sensor, install the WFC3 camera and the COS spectrograph, and try to fix the broken instruments ACS and STIS.

Since this is All-Star game week, let's rephrase in terms of baseball:

At the moment, Hubble is a pro baseball team whose two star pitchers (ACS and STIS) have been on the disabled list for years -- they may never play again. The Hubble All-Stars still shows up for games, but rely on just two aging nuckleball pitchers (WFPC2 and NICMOS). The team has announced a huge trade for two brilliant prospects, WFC3 and COS, who throw pitches nobody's ever seen. (WPC3 even pitches ambidexterously!*) At the same time, the team has scheduled risky surgeries to bring its two disabled pitchers, ACS and STIS, back to work.

So, Hubble fans around the world are waiting for the big trade (Servicing Mission 4), scheduled for October. If it happens, for the next several years the team will be the best in history. If it fails, the team will fall apart. Tense.


* ambidexterious: uses both UV/blue and IR/red detectors. Kinda like throwing with either arm.

Hubble Kaleidoscope finds Evidence of Space Looking All Crazy

BALTIMORE—Astronomers analyzing the first images captured by the new Hubble Space Kaleidoscope, which went online Tuesday, announced that they've acquired the first concrete evidence that the universe is in a constant state of total weirdness. [full article here.]

Thank you, The Onion, and Andy for the link.

Happy Birthday, Hubble Space Telescope!

Eighteen years ago yesterday, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched on shuttle Discovery.

As other bloggers have noted, most freshman Astro101 students are the same age as Hubble. And were toddlers when astronauts corrected the spherical abberation, finally giving us diffraction--limited views of the distant universe.

Problem with Spitzer Space Telescope - apparently resolved

The problem is now resolved. This past week, there was a problem with the electronics that control the IRS and MIPS instruments onboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. Normal science operations have resumed.

Description of the problem can be found on the SSC website.

Fire threatens Kitt Peak National Observatory

The Alhambre wildfire, 3500 acres, threatens Kitt Peak National Observatory and Baboquivari (sacred mountain of the Tohono O'odham people.)

Four "hotshot" crews and 2 big air tankers are working the fire, according to the AZ Daily Star. Scientific staff were evacuated Saturday night. Now everyone waits to see what the wind does.

This is the 5th wildfire in 5 years to threaten Arizona telescopes. (Mt. Lemmon, Graham, Lemmon again, Hopkins, Kitt Peak).

Hey fire crews: be safe, and good luck.


Photo by David Sanders, Arizona Daily Star.