Why SpaceX Wants To CHANGE NASA's Hubble Telescope Orbit..
57Why SpaceX Wants To CHANGE NASA's Hubble Telescope Orbit..
Welcome back to Tech Vault. NASA and SpaceX signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement Thursday, Sept. 22, to study the feasibility of a SpaceX and Polaris Program idea to boost the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit with the Dragon spacecraft, at no cost to the government. SpaceX – in partnership with the Polaris Program – proposed this study to better understand the technical challenges associated with servicing missions. This study is non-exclusive, and other companies may propose similar studies with different rockets or spacecraft as their model.
Teams expect the study to take up to six months, collecting technical data from both Hubble and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. This data will help determine whether it would be possible to safely rendezvous, dock, and move the telescope into a more stable orbit. While Hubble and Dragon will serve as test models for this study, portions of the mission concept may be applicable to other spacecraft, particularly those in near-Earth orbit like Hubble. Hubble has been operating since 1990, about 335 miles above Earth in an orbit that is slowly decaying over time. Re-boosting Hubble into a higher, more stable orbit could add multiple years of operations to its life. At the end of its lifetime, NASA plans to safely de-orbit or dispose of Hubble.
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