The American space agency and the new space pioneer SpaceX announced that they are examining the technological and economic feasibility of launching a service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope – apparently using a Dragon-type spacecraft.
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched more than thirty years ago, and is nearing the end of its life. The beloved telescope is in perfect working order, and continues to be used by astronomers around the world, but it is falling back to Earth as a result of atmospheric drag – and is expected to burn up in the atmosphere within the next decade. Moreover, parts of the 12-ton telescope – such as the main mirror and the body of the telescope – are expected to survive the entry into the atmosphere and hit the ground, with the potential to damage property or human life.
A manned mission to mourn?
NASA’s original plan was to land the Hubble Space Telescope back on Earth via a space shuttle – and display it in the Smithsonian Museum. This is of course no longer possible as the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011, and the shuttles Enterprise, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavor became exhibits themselves museums.
Even before that, in the fifth and final service mission for the space telescope in 2009, the astronauts of the space shuttle Atlantis installed a soft-grip mechanism in the telescope that would allow any other spacecraft – manned or automated – to easily connect to the telescope and change its trajectory, either with the aim of extending its life or with the aim of crashing him in a controlled manner.
There is no difficulty in principle, however, in launching a Dragon spacecraft that will connect to the space telescope and lift it, from its current orbit of 540 km, to its original orbit of 600 km above sea level, as launched by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. According to estimates, raising the orbit may extend the life of the telescope by 15 to 20 years. On the other hand, if it is decided not to launch a service mission to the telescope, NASA will have to launch during the current decade a mission that will crash the telescope safely, probably in the “spacecraft graveyard” in the Pacific Ocean.
Moreover, it is possible that NASA and SpaceX will want to take advantage of the opportunity – and also to upgrade and maintain the telescope’s own systems. Thus, for example, in 2018 the Hubble entered a “safe mode” due to a malfunction in one of its gyroscopes (the Hubble uses three gyroscopes to “lock” (about its purposes). Replacing old systems such as the gyroscopes with new and more sophisticated systems will ensure that it continues to function optimally. However, for that, real-life astronauts will have to fly to the telescope, remove the old systems and install the new ones in a series of complex spacewalks.
Isaacman: “To raise and serve the mourning without government support”
Another interesting question concerns the funding of the mission, whether it will be manned or not. The team formed by NASA and SpaceX, which will discuss the feasibility of the program for six months, also includes a person who is not a rocket scientist: the billionaire Jared Isaacman, who paid for and commanded the Inspiration 4 mission, the first mission in history without “professional” astronauts, which sent four civilians into space in the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft last year.
In February of this year, Isaacman announced the Polaris program: three commercial and record-breaking flights, two of them in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and the third which will be the first manned mission in the new Starship spacecraft. Like the Gemini program that preceded the Apollo program, the civilian Polaris missions were designed to build SpaceX’s capabilities – and the capabilities of its astronauts – for a Mars landing. Thus, the first mission, Polaris Dawn, which will be launched next year, will try to break two records: the first spacewalk in a commercial mission, and circumnavigating the Earth at a height that will break the previous record of 1,375 km above sea level – the record set by Charles ” Pete” Conrad and Richard Gordon on the Gemini 11 mission in 1966 (the Apollo missions to the moon flew much higher, but they did not orbit the Earth).
In other words, Isaacman can finance the service mission for the Hubble Space Telescope himself as part of the Polaris program: SpaceX will practice demanding spacewalks, and NASA and the world will benefit for many more years with Hubble – at no cost to the American taxpayer.
“Certainly, the idea of ​​raising and servicing the Hubble – assuming that our research supports the feasibility of such a move – would be a logical second mission for the Polaris program,” Isaacman said during the press conference he held together with the managers of NASA and SpaceX. “We can take advantage of the developments of the space industry the commercial to carry out a task with minimal or no government support.”