Lockheed Martin is part of a team of aerospace companies studying a revolutionary upgrade to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
The plan to launch a Space Shuttle mission to equip Hubble with a new 8m diameter primary mirror which would increase the telescope's power, enabling it to detect Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars.
Astronauts on the Space Shuttle would perform a series of spacewalks to remove the existing mirror assembly and fix the new one in its place. The Hubble upgrade is being considered because the $2 billion Next Generation Telescope (NGT) being developed by NASA is now unlikely to be launched until 2009 at the earliest. The NGT is also to be fitted with an 8m diameter primary mirror which will have to be made of material to enable it to be unfurled into position in space, a technological requirement that may result in further delays. Although an NGT precursor craft called Nexus will be launched on the Space Shuttle equipped with a 2.8m primary mirror, compared with the 2.4m diameter mirror on Hubble, scientists would like to see a quantum leap in resolution a lot faster.
Lockheed and the other companies and universities have come up with the plan which an ultra-cautious NASA feels could be risky because Hubble is already 10 years old and it is arguable whether its systems, such as the fine guidance sensors, can support such a significant upgrade.
Source: Flight Daily News
