Truckin' Up to Low Earth Orbit, Part 3: The Shuttle Gives Science a Boost

[n2doc]

By Michael J. Battaglia | Jul 6, 2011 06:00 AM


Before the 1986 Challenger disaster made safety paramount and new constraints had been established, the shuttle could carry fueled upper-stage rockets to launch space probes, which embarked for planetary destinations.

From low orbit to deep space

The delivery into orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope, considered one of NASA's greatest science achievements, stands out. Not as well known, but very important to solar system astronomy, were the highly successful Magellan, Galileo and Ulysses probes, sent on to orbit Venus, Jupiter and the sun, respectively, from shuttles' cargo bays. Besides Hubble, these trucks also hauled into orbit two other important orbiting telescopes: the still operating Chandra X-Ray and the deorbited Compton Gamma-Ray observatories.


BY JOVE: The Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft attached to the Inertial Upper Stage booster is ejected from space shuttle Atlantis’s payload bay. Credit: NASA

Of course, besides safety concerns, there were other drawbacks. Space probes had to be configured and sized to fit into the shuttle bay. For example, Galileo was designed with a foldable high-gain antenna, to be opened like an umbrella after embarkation. Unfortunately, it added complexity to what would have been designed as a rigid dish, and once Galileo was Jupiter-bound the antenna did not completely unfurl—a problem that almost ended the mission. Fortunately, innovative flight engineers were able to program the craft to use a low-gain antenna for sending back the torrents of data, albeit much more slowly. Patience, new trajectories and compression programs saved the mission.

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[Lionel Mandrake]

1. No, it's the other way around.

Science gave the shuttle a boost.

Astronauts launching science probes and repairing the Hubble made great PR for the manned space program.

The Hubble and other science missions could have been designed to use expendable launch vehicles, which are dirt cheap compared to the shuttle.