Re: Bush cancels Hubble telescope rescue mission

From: George William Herbert (gherbert_at_retro.com)
Date: 01/31/05 

Date: 31 Jan 2005 01:31:34 GMT

gregg <saville@comcast.net> wrote:
>>>: We have no other spectrum in which an orbital observatory
>>>: has had continuous operations.
>
> CHANDRA has been operating continuously since launch in 1998. It operates
>in the X-Ray spectrum.

You're missing the point, and it was deployed July 23, 1999.

Chandra had a design lifetime of 5 years on orbit.
It probably will last longer, but that's the advertised
design lifetime.

The followon mission, Constellation-X, is still in long
term planning and not expected to launch until 2011 at
the earliest. That schedule was known and accepted
when Constellation-X was formalized in 1996, before
Chandra was launched in 1999 but when Chandra's design
and planned lifetime on orbit were known.

There is no plan which formally requires or guarantees
that there will be a continuous X-ray observatory in
orbit from the time Chandra launched in 1999 going through
the forseeable future. The design and schedule for
Constellation-X were timed with the implicit acknowledgement
that it's likely that Chandra will fail before Constellation-X
gets launched, and that therefore it's likely there will
be a gap in observation capability.

-george william herbert
gherbert@retro.com

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