NASA on Thursday asked private companies for ideas to raise the Hubble Space Telescope’s sinking orbit, service it or guide it to a controlled reentry before it falls in the 2030s.
The request for information gives companies until 3 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 30 to answer. NASA wants to know who could capture the 36-year-old telescope and lift it to at least 373 miles (600 kilometers), improve its performance, or bring it down safely. The company would supply the rocket, the servicing spacecraft, mission operations and “crew if applicable,” Stephen Clark reported for Ars Technica.
“The requirement includes that the boost and/or servicing mission must not harm the HST and that this mission is expected to occur by 2032,” NASA wrote in the document.
The agency isn’t promising to buy anything. Officials want to know who is interested, what a mission would cost and which companies have a realistic chance of reaching Hubble before it burns up. Orbital forecasts put reentry most likely in 2033 or 2034 if nothing is done, though solar activity can move that date.
NASA has tried this before. In 2022, SpaceX and the Polaris Program, the private spaceflight effort funded by the billionaire Jared Isaacman, signed an unfunded agreement with NASA to study whether a Crew Dragon could boost Hubble at no cost to the government, Spaceflight Now reported at the time. NASA put out its own call for commercial reboost concepts that December. Nothing came of either.
In June 2024, Mark Clampin, then NASA’s astrophysics director, said, “After exploring the current commercial capabilities, we are not going to pursue a reboost right now,” according to SpaceNews. Dr. Clampin cited the risk of a “premature loss of science” if the telescope were damaged. NASA emails obtained by NPR showed that a program manager, Barbara Grofic, had written in December 2022 that the mission would “essentially be funded by Jared Isaacman.”
Mr. Isaacman now runs NASA.
“Hubble still has important science ahead of it,” he said in the agency’s announcement, calling for “innovative and cost-effective ways to extend the life of an asset already on orbit.” Dr. Nicky Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, called the telescope “a national icon that has fundamentally changed how humanity views our universe.” She said companies now have new tools for grabbing and servicing satellites in orbit, and that NASA wants to look at a boost while it builds the flagship observatory meant to follow Hubble.
Hubble has no engine of its own. Its orbit was last raised in 2002, when the space shuttle Columbia visited for a servicing mission. The final shuttle servicing flight, in 2009, didn’t boost it, and the shuttles were retired two years later.
Since then, drag has done the rest. Over 24 years the telescope has drifted down from 362 miles (583 kilometers) to about 292 miles (470 kilometers). A push to 373 miles would likely keep it in orbit for at least 25 more years.