The Hubble Space Telescope could be visited by astronauts again one day.
In the next 20 years, Hubble received five sets of visitors. The astronauts who arrived on NASA space shuttle missions repeatedly repaired and upgraded the scope to allow it to continue observing the heavens.
NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011. The agency is looking into sending a Dragon capsule to Hubble in order to boost the observatory's altitude and possibly assist it in other ways.
The Hubble Space Telescope is used for servicing missions.
We want to make a difference. Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer operations and integration at SpaceX, said during a press conference that if benefiting Hubble means not just boosting it but also providing some servicing, it can be done with a human spaceflight mission. It is all on the table.
There are no plans for a mission to Hubble at this time. There is no NASA money involved in the feasibility study which will last six months. The agency is taking part in an unfunded space act agreement.
Jensen said that they would be looking at Dragon capabilities and how they would need to be changed in order to dock with Hubble. Details of exactly how that's done, and how we safely do that from a trajectory point of view, are all to be worked out.
She said that a Dragon Hubble mission wouldn't need to be crewed. The feasibility study could point planners towards a different type of vehicle.
Hubble is doing well and is returning amazing and informative photos of the universe. It snapped photos of the Didymos asteroid system the other day after NASA deliberately hit one of the space rocks.
Over the past 33 years, Hubble's atmospheric drag has reduced. The telescope zooms around Earth at an altitude of 335 miles (540 kilometers), which is 38 miles (60 km) lower than it was when it was first launched.
Hubble has a 50% chance of falling back to Earth in 2037 according to the Hubble project manager.
When its observing days are over, NASA will deorbit Hubble in a controlled manner. Launching a robotic mission to the telescope will be necessary for that to happen. The deorbit mission is expected to be launched by the end of the 2020s.
That doesn't have an extra boost. Getting Hubble back up to its initial altitude could allow the observatory to work for many more years.
If you could get that altitude, you could add up to 20 years to the mission.
A Dragon mission to Hubble could be launched sooner than you think. There is an architecture in place that could accommodate such a flight, which is the Polaris Program, a set of three missions organized and led by billionaire entrepreneurs.
In photos, there are historic Inspiration4 missions.
Polaris will consist of three missions, the first of which, Polaris Dawn, will send Isaacman and three crewmates to space as early as March 23,23. The private spacewalk will be the first of its kind and the Dragon will be sent farther from Earth than any crewed mission has done.
The second and third Polaris missions are not known at the moment, but we know that Polaris 2 will fly on a Dragon and Polaris 3 will use a huge vehicle that will take humans to the moon and Mars.
The Polaris program is about demonstrating and improving human spaceflight capabilities. A trip to Hubble would be in that category.
He said that boosting and servicing Hubble would be a logical second mission.
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