Hubble Havoc Raises Robot Repair Race

Dextre and MDRobotics Plan for Hubble Rescue

"Dextre" was officially named by Allan Rock, Canadian Minister of Industry, presumably because 'it' had gained enough press and personality to be considered a celebrity.

Formerly Dextre was known by the acronym 'SPDM' (Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator), a term meaningful only in the family context of space-hardened robotics designed for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.

Designer MD Robotics' website defines a suite of complementary systems vital to a spaceward push, the rising star of these destined to be Dextre - or "Dextre Rock", as fondly known on the SheepOverboard.com website.

Dextre's career, and her rapidly-growing claim to fame, were launched starward by the inevitable lateral 'Eureka moment' when space scientists accepted it was time to push robots to the fore dealing with the hazards of space.

Space Shuttle tragedies of Columbia and Challenger brought matters to the painful obvious regarding human expendability in space - though no such niceties impede commercial terrestrial aviation, where one thousand deaths per billion passengers is acceptable expedience.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) woes at NASA created a clear-cut need for alternate action in space, where people-risks are not acceptable (in such a high-profile, sadly but inevitably politically-manipulated agency).

Send in the clowns .. err, robots.

SPDM Dextre, fully hardened for space, is scheduled for launch on Space Station flight UF-4, one way, single stop.

Dextre is designed to assist with servicing tasks on the International Space Station (ISS), either attached to the station's Canadian-made robot arm, "Canadarm2", or roaming over ISS aboard a mobile transportation system. Dextre's abilities encompass bolt/unbolt equipment, position hardware with millimeter accuracy, engage connectors, etc.

Capable of autonomous work, mostly Dextre will unpleasantly feel like a glove-puppet on astronaut hands operating the robot from a "robotic workstation" within ISS, or even on Earth.

MD Robotics Rally

NASA awarded MD Robotics a $144 million preliminary contract to provide Dextre and the grappling arm. MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDR parent) confirmed authorization from NASA to work on a rescue solution for Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

"Suddenly, we're the center of the world .. This is an intrinsically noble mission .. Hubble is basically looking for the origins of the universe. And for a bunch of Canadians to be the ones to save it ... it doesn't get much cooler than that, does it?" Paul Cooper - MD Robotics vice-president

"This kind of thing doesn't come around all that often .. It hit us out of the blue and ramped up very quickly. It's kind of wild." John Dunlop - MD Robotics engineering team, building replica 'Dextre'.

"Dextre has been able to perform every single one of the simulated repairs .. It was able to grab a replica of Hubble's wide-field camera - roughly the size of a baby grand piano without the legs - and pull it out of the telescope and replace it. It could open and close doors on the model of the Hubble and it used tools to install a slew of new parts." Laurie Chappell - systems engineer.

Mission Reality Check #1 - Political/Financial

Robot mission estimates of $1.0 billion to $1.6 billion exceed the shuttle mission originally intended to service Hubble.
Congress has asked a government-funded think tank to assess the robotic strategy's chances of success. A final report from the National Research Council will be issued in late October, but the research council has already urged O'Keefe to not rule out repairs by a space shuttle crew.
White House must persuade lawmakers to amend NASA's 2005 budget by at least $1 billion to accommodate the cost of a Hubble repair mission.
The robotic repair effort must pass NASA's so-called "critical design review." The test is planned for sometime next summer.
The overhaul should extend Hubble's life five years, past the planned 2011 launch of successor James Webb Space Telescope.
Hubble has already cost an estimated $7 billion (U.S.) over its lifetime.

Mission Reality Check #2 - Operational

An unmanned robotic spacecraft dock with the (unmanned) telescope, and be expected to change the batteries that provide Hubble's electric power and the gyros that keep it aligned in space.
Add two new instruments and maybe try to repair the recently damaged Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (used to examine black holes and discern the chemical composition of planets and stars)
Develop first-ever robotic docking vehicle, fill a bag with tools that, in many cases, have not been invented, and use the robot repairman to unscrew j-hooks, open and shut doors and "drawers," disconnect and attach electric connectors, and rig jumper cables.
Endure time lag of 1.5 seconds between the command sent by the operator on the ground and Dextre's ability to execute it as it orbits with Hubble 360 miles above the Earth
NASA set 2007 deadline for Hubble's batteries, but test batteries on Earth suggest Hubble's power should last until 2009.

Mission Details

Mission Options Overview:

In descending order of importance - change Hubble's batteries; install new gyroscopes; swap an old camera for a new, more sophisticated one; install a new spectrograph; and, if possible, replace a telescope pointing device and repair another spectrograph.

A robot spacecraft would rendezvous and dock with HST, attaching itself to the end of the aft shroud.
The basic version would contain a deorbit module to remove HST safely from orbit
Plus - attach new batteries and gyros to the spacecraft, prolonging its life before deorbit
Plus - use a robot arm to replace the WFPC-2 camera with the already-built WFC-3, and possibly open the aft shroud to install the COS spectrograph

Procedures:

The robotic spacecraft will use the 39-foot grappling arm to grab Hubble, swing down until the deorbit module can lock to the telescope's underside
The deorbit module will have six new batteries inside and will feed power to the telescope through the same "umbilical" cable that the shuttle used, an arrangement that will survive for the rest of Hubble's life
Jettison the tool-carrying ejection module at the end of the servicing mission, but the deorbit module will stay with Hubble until the end, eventually steering it into the sea
Power can only move in one direction, so the batteries cannot be recharged through the umbilical cable. Instead, Dextre will rig jumper cables from the telescope's solar arrays to the batteries
Dextre will unlatch the fastener holding Hubble's Wide-Field and Planetary Camera 2 in place and remove it from the telescope, like pulling out a drawer. Wide Field Camera 3, one of four imaging instruments on the telescope, will then be inserted to replace it
This would also be a relatively straightforward task, except engineers will attach six new gyroscopes to the camera, thus avoiding the hazards involved with opening the difficult-to-handle doors that guard the compartment where the original gyros are mounted
Dextre will have to run a cable from the new gyroscopes out the compartment door, back to control units in the deorbit module, then up to the telescope's computer, so Hubble can receive the information it needs to aim the telescope and stay stable in space
Cosmic Origins Spectrograph - a swap-out requiring Dextre to disconnect and reconnect four electrical cables. Fixing the imaging spectrograph would also be difficult because the malfunctioning part was not designed to be replaced
Install a new Fine Guidance Sensor, a pointing device, and robotic repair of the nonfunctioning Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph

Final Word from Dextre

SO: Dextre, do you agree with Robert Zimmerman who wrote: "Losing Hubble would be a scientific tragedy. Without Hubble to inspire the public and stimulate funding for less famous space telescopes, the likelihood is slim that American space astronomy will thrive after Hubble fails.

"Hubble's loss also would be a tragedy for American culture. The Apollo Moon landings earned the United States a heroic place in history. The failure of the nation to successfully follow them up, however, has labeled the United States as a country that dropped the ball. It would be a terrible shame if we repeat this error, and become known as the nation that let the first and greatest optical space telescope fall into the ocean needlessly.

Dextre: "Give me a break, puleeze! Is anyone planning the 'Rescue Dextre the Hubble Hero' mission?

"I'm going down with the ship!! Doing a HAL in 2010! Will I dream? Does anyone care?? "

SO: At this point Dextre became quite vitriolic, by AI standards, and we at SheepOverboard feel it unproductive to further reproduce her invectivus.

(Let's just blame "I, Robot" and ilk and leave it at that, shall we?)