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Robotic repairmen solicited for work on space telescope

Inventors are being invited to suggest ways to send a robot repairman into space to repair the Hubble telescope, the science satellite that is expected to start going haywire around 2007 if it does not receive maintenance.

The robot idea gives backing to a faction that believes robots are not just the best way of exploring the Moon and Mars, but also the smartest means of doing near-range work in Earth orbit.

"Our confidence is growing that robots can do the job," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said early this month.

Even in the days when space travel was just "science fiction," robots and human astronauts were always seen as rivals.

The Fireball XL5 puppet television series made in England from 1961 onwards was just one of many where a human pilot had a robot co-pilot sitting alongside. In XL5, Robert the Robot often fumed at the unpredictable behavior of his human counterpart Steve Zodiac.

XL5 makers Gerry and Sylvia Anderson did not foresee that 21st-century humans would mainly fume at the unpredictable behavior of robots such as the Mars rover Spirit, which last month rebooted in the middle of its work, just like millions of earthbound Windows PCs.

A 20-person group at the US National Academy of Sciences, along with NASA and industry engineers and academics, are already studying the non-human mission, and underline that the robot will not make its own decisions but do everything on command from the ground.

"What we are looking for is not autonomous robotics, but tele-robotics. If this mission goes forward, people will still be servicing Hubble," O'Keefe told the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Denver, Colorado.

Human decision will still be needed the whole time, including human improvisation and creativity if things go wrong.

NASA wants proposals to be submitted by July 16, because time is running short. "This is the first step in a long process of developing the best options to save Hubble," O'Keefe said.

"We are on a tight schedule to assure a Hubble servicing mission toward the end of calendar year 2007. But we must act promptly to fully explore this approach," he said.

The robotic serviceman's primary task would be to attach a "suicide backpack" to Hubble so that it can be gracefully steered back into the atmosphere and burned up instead of remaining out there as a piece of unpredictable space junk that could fall at any time.
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