The Hubble Space Telescope is more than 30 years old. The venerable telescope continues to create valuable scientific data and receive remarkable images of the cosmos in parallel with James Webb, but it will not be forever. Sooner or later it will go out of orbit and burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. But Hubble could have worked longer if its orbit had been raised. This complex but feasible operation is now being considered by NASA. But the agency is not able to cope on its own.
NASA invites private companies to submit their proposals and ideas for extending the life of the telescope. As a result of success, it will be a demonstration of how to perform similar operations on other satellites in order to extend their service life.
Earlier, SpaceX and NASA discussed using the SpaceX Polaris program to help Hubble. Now NASA has published a request to the company to collect ideas on how they may be able to save the satellites, and to do this in practice, use Hubble.
SpaceX Polaris is a private human spaceflight program organized by commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman. Isaacman was a participant in the Inspiration 4 mission, which was the first mission to space with a fully civilian crew. The Polaris program also plans further commercial flights using SpaceX Crew Dragon and Starship spacecraft.
“SpaceX and the Polaris Program want to expand the boundaries of current technology and explore how commercial partnerships can creatively solve challenging, complex problems. Missions such as servicing Hubble would help us expand space capabilities,” said Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer service and integration at SpaceX.
According to NASA
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