Extending Hubble's Life: NASA Seeks Commercial Ideas to Boost and Service the Telescope, With Responses Due November 30 and a Mission Needed by 2032
NASA announced on October 30 that it issued a Request for Information on October 29 to learn more about industry capabilities for in-space servicing to support the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been operating for more than 35 years.
The request seeks commercial interest in three directions: potentially conducting a mission to boost Hubble to a higher altitude to extend its science lifetime; servicing Hubble to enhance its capabilities; or performing a safe, controlled re-entry into Earth's atmosphere or orbital disposal at the end of Hubble's mission.
The Request for Information will remain open for responses until 3 p.m. EST on Monday, November 30.
The timetable is set by the orbit itself. Like all spacecraft in low Earth orbit, Hubble's altitude is slowly decreasing because of atmospheric drag, and Hubble does not have a propulsion system to maintain its own orbit. Analysis predicts Hubble is likely to re-enter the atmosphere in the 2033 to 2034 timeframe, so NASA anticipates that a mission would need to take place by 2032.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Hubble still has important science ahead of it and the agency should be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible. If there are innovative and cost-effective ways to extend the life of an asset already on orbit, he said, NASA owes it to the American taxpayer and the scientific community to explore them, and extending Hubble's life would mean more discoveries and more science.
Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, called Hubble a national icon that has fundamentally changed how humanity views the universe for more than 35 years. She said commercial industry has rapidly evolved to offer new capabilities for in-space satellite capture and servicing, and that, given the time until Hubble's anticipated re-entry, NASA is eager to explore the breadth of possibilities to boost Hubble to a higher orbit while it develops the flagship mission to follow.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations, Lockheed Martin Space in Denver also supports mission operations at Goddard, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Source: NASA, October 30
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：在轨运行的哈勃空间望远镜（2009年STS-125维修任务期间拍摄）。照片：NASA，公共领域，经Wikimedia Commons。 / The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit, photographed during the STS-125 servicing mission in 2009. Photo: NASA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
