I think two more decades of flight is a real possibility for Hubble.
What makes Hubble worthwhile, ... is putting in new science instruments that have state-of-the-art detectors to really make the leaps forward...what we call the 'science discovery factor.' Those are the things that are really going to make Hubble a useful and desirable space research vehicle beyond the 2008 time frame.
That's driven principally by the gyros. And right now, we're saying we think we're good until the middle of 2008, ... Hubble will still be worth servicing as long as the batteries hold out.
It worked far better than we had expected.
Scrapping hardware that is three-quarters complete is, I think, sinful.
The best idea for extending life beyond two gyros is to get up there with the shuttle and service it. And that's what we're working on.
The projected life of Hubble batteries has been extended. We used to say we thought they were good until 2008-2009. Now we're thinking 2010. We think Hubble will remain serviceable until well into 2010…based on latest projections and test data we have.
It worked far better than we had expected. That could be very key in terms of keeping the science going if a shuttle [servicing] launch date drifts to the right a lot.
Instead of [LRO] building from scratch and having all of our stuff wind up in a scrap pile, we thought that this made some sense.
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