Can NASA and SpaceX help give the Hubble Space Telescope a new lease of life?
Can NASA and SpaceX help save the Hubble Space Telescope?
Launched in 1990, the world’s premier visible light space observatory has been sending back to Earth jaw-dropping images for 32 years. It currently orbits about 332 miles/535 km above Earth, completing one orbit approximately every 95 minutes
The iconic space telescope won’t last forever. Hubble’s orbit is decaying and if it degrades badly it will unavoidably burn-up in Earth’s atmosphere. Mission over.
NASA has two options. Accept that this scenario is inevitable and, someday soon (possibly as early as 2026, though more likely the end of the decade) guide Hubble to break-up over the Pacific Ocean, inserting itself in the spacecraft cemetery like so much space hardware before it. That may necessitate some kind of mission to dock with it in orbit and guide it back in a controlled way.
Or it could send a spacecraft to dock with it and boost it farther from Earth, thus extending its life.
On September 22, 2022 NASA and SpaceX announced that they were investigating the possibility of using a Dragon spacecraft—of the kind used to ferry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station—to go visit Hubble. On Dec. 22 NASA issued a request for other commercial space companies to get involved.
A full-size model of the Crew-1 spacecraft module sits near the launch pad as a SpaceX Falcon 9 … [+]
The idea is that Hubble could be boosted to a higher orbit to continue its work for many more years. There’s also the tantalising prospect that it could also be serviced and refurbished—and its optics improved.
A general servicing would be crucial because whether or not Hubble avoids re-entry this decade it is getting old. Launched in 1990 and last serviced by a space shuttle crew in 2009, it’s beginning to have technical problems. The latest was in July 2021 when it spent a month out of action because its payload computer failed before the problem was fixed.
However, from a science point of view an upgrade to its optics would be a game-changer. The reflecting telescope has a 2.4 meter mirror that can’t be upgraded, but its cameras could be.
The task of “reboosting a satellite in orbit, using the school bus-sized Hubble as a demonstration, at no cost to the government”—NASA’s words—could be a task for SpaceX and its embryonic Polaris Program.
Revealed in February 2022, the Polaris Program is a tie-up with SpaceX that will see up to three human spaceflight missions to demonstrate new technologies. It’s headed-up by Jared Isaacman, founder of Shift4 Payments, who went to space as commander of the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in September 2021.
The Crew of the next SpaceX private astronaut flight called Polaris Dawn, (Left to Right) Anna … [+]
Its first mission, Polaris Dawn, is targeted for no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2023 and will see the Dragon spacecraft containing four astronauts (Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon) fly 870 miles above Earth—the highest since the Apollo missions to the Moon. The third mission is scheduled to be the first flight of SpaceX’s Starship with humans on board.
So it’s the second mission that just might involve a visit to Hubble.
However, NASA’s invitation for the wider private space companies to get involved suggests that SpaceX and the Polaris Program aren’t totally convinced. For its part NASA says it just wants to “understand the commercial possibilities.”
The feasibility study will take up to six months, with data from Hubble and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft being used to help determine whether it would be possible to safely rendezvous, dock and move the telescope into a more stable orbit.
“SpaceX and the Polaris Program want to expand the boundaries of current technology and explore how commercial partnerships can creatively solve challenging, complex problems,” said Jessica Jensen, vice president of Customer Operations & Integration at SpaceX. “Missions such as servicing Hubble would help us expand space capabilities to ultimately help all of us achieve our goals of becoming a space-faring, multiplanetary civilization.”
If the feasibility studies suggests it’s a go-er it would be the sixth time Hubble has been visited since its launch from Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.
circa 1992: The Hubble Space Telescope leaving the cargo bay of a NASA space shuttle. The telescope … [+]
Almost immediately after its launch it was discovered that its mirror had an aberration causing images to be blurry, so it was visited in orbit by astronauts aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1993. They installed corrective optics. More servicing missions took place in 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2009 to upgrade various components, notably adding the telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3.
Hubble now has six cameras and sensors to gather data on and take spectacular images of deep sky targets previously beyond the reach of astronomers. There are larger ground-based telescopes, but their view of the cosmos is limited by Earth’s atmosphere, which blocks infrared and ultraviolet light.
Hubble remains valuable to astronomers—and continues to make incredible observations—because it sees the universe in ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light. The new James Webb Space Telescope deals only in near and far-infrared light. Since Webb orbits the Sun a million miles from Earth it can likely never be serviced—despite repeated strikes by micrometeoroids already.
Its most famous image is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, an image of a tiny region of space in the Fornax constellation that shows a staggering 10,000+ galaxies.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
