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NASA astronaut Mike Massimino has been indulging in some light Twittering ahead of his upcoming trip to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Mike Massimino on Twitter Mission specialist Massimino's modest number of updates have to date attracted almost 18,000 followers keen to keep up to speed on what's happening with " …

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  1. jonathan spooner

    IIS platform

    Wonder why they don't choose to strap more telescopes to the IIS rather than building them as satellites?

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  2. Mike Flugennock
    Boffin

    @jonathan spooner re: ISS platform

    I'm assuming you did actually mean "ISS" (International Space Station) and not "IIS" (Microsoft product).

    That said: At least one of the reasons there's no large 'scopes mounted to ISS is that they really don't have the kind of fine attitude control that HST has, and also because it needs to hold an attitude that keeps its power arrays aimed at the Sun, as well as making its docking ports accessible to incoming Progress, Soyuz, Verne, and Space Shuttle craft.

    The ATM (Apollo Telescope Mount) used on the old SkyLab station worked well, returning valuable new images and data on sunspots and other solar activity, but SkyLab was much smaller and the scope in the ATM was, iirc, able to move independently.

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