Re: ISS vs Hubble vs Shuttle

On May 11, 9:34 am, GSWeb8 <gsw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I heard a newscast recently thatsaid there has to be a 2nd shuttle
ready for launch in case things go bad with the primary mission
because the space shuttle cannot simply "fly to the ISS", and that the
hubble orbit is drastically differect from the ISS. Why cannot the
shuttle move to any location in space? How does this differ from any
other rendevous procedure?

The space shuttle can indeed fly to the ISS; it has done so lots of
times.

As noted, though, so that the Russians, whose country is at a more
northerly latitude than the U.S., can also send spacecraft to the ISS,
it has a more inclined orbit than is normally used for U.S.
spaceflights. This means that it takes more fuel for the Shuttle to go
to the ISS than it would if the ISS had a conventional orbital
inclination, because it gets less help from the Earth's rotation in
reaching this orbit.

The Hubble Space Telescope is in a much higher orbit than the ISS. My
understanding was that this orbit was so high that the Space Shuttle
can't go there, and instead the HST has to be brought down temporarily
to a lower orbit before the Shuttle can rendezvous with it. Because
the orbit is less inclined than that of the ISS, the resulting orbit
can still be a higher one than that of the ISS, requiring less fuel to
be left with the HST to change its orbit. But the result is that the
Shuttle has to choose only one of the two places to visit - the ISS,
or the HST - because they're in two different kinds of orbits, both of
which are demanding orbits for the Shuttle to reach, requiring just
about all the fuel it can carry.

John Savard
.

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