It has been 34 years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into the harsh and unforgiving environment of Earth’s orbit. It is about 320 miles (515 kilometers) above our planet right now, exposed to solar radiation, freezing temperatures and micrometeoroid impacts while providing breathtaking and textbook-changing images of The universe about us.
Thirty-four years under such stress takes its toll. Just earlier this week (June 4), NASA announced one of the Hubble Space TelescopeThe scientists’ remaining three gyroscopes, which help scientists make sure the ship is pointing in the right direction, failed. The observatory will now go into single gyro mode, keeping the other still working gyro in reserve so that there is a backup option to turn to when the time comes. That plan is expected to keep Hubble alive until the mid-2030s. But what happens after that? Well, maybe the end of Hubble. Maybe not.
The thing is, Hubble’s orbit is very slowly getting lower and lower time passes due to the atmospheric resistance of our planet. It also tends to age and with age comes a certain weariness. This presents two paths for Hubble’s future. On the one hand, scientists can tap into the observatory’s stable descent and perform a controlled reentry, where most (but not all) spacecraft will burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
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Or, scientists can raise Hubble to a higher orbit where it can rest for a while — potentially allowing time to decide whether a deeper servicing mission can be carried out. kind of like the old days. Which brings us to the billionaire with an ambitious plan.
In 2022, Jared Isaacman, who finances and commands Inspiration4 entirely civilian private space launched and aims to do the same with his Polaris program, announced a proposal to rescue Hubble with a commercial mission in cooperation with SpaceX. It was related to NASA’s request for private companies to develop ideas on how to proceed with Hubble’s accelerator route. The idea was indeed considered and discussed at length (including a months-long feasibility study), but long story short, NASA ultimately decided against it.
“Our position right now is that after we explore the current commercial options, we will not pursue a restart,” Mark Clampin, director of the agency’s Astrophysics Division and Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said during a June 4 conference call , publicly updating on the status of the Hubble telescope. “We greatly appreciate the thorough analysis performed by NASA team, SpaceX and the Polaris program, as well as our other potential partners. It certainly gave us better insight into the design considerations for future commercial restart missions.”
There has been quite a bit of controversy lately between Isaacman, space experts, journalists and even the public when it comes to private Hubble service. Recently NPR an investigation that reached internal NASA emails through a Freedom of Information Act request sparked debate, for example, because it revealed mixed reactions from NASA officials to the idea. Isakman himself also has suggested this, if the plan doesn’t pan out, politics may be to blame, as the NPR article points out. But during the latest Hubble conference, we may have gained some of the clearest insight yet into the agency’s motivations.
In general, it seems that the risks involved are not necessarily worth taking right now, as Hubble is technically doing well. “We still believe it has very high reliability,” Patrick Krauss, NASA’s Hubble project manager Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during the conference. “We can run Hubble very successfully, doing groundbreaking science for the rest of the 20 years and into the 2030s.”
Regarding those risks, Clampin explained what the aforementioned feasibility study found, including premature loss of science and some technological challenges. It’s possible, Clampin said, that a mission like this could contaminate the telescope’s mirror. Because Hubble is an ultraviolet optical telescope, even small amounts of volatiles can land on the mirror and compromise the observatory’s sensitivity. “We believe we need to do additional work to determine whether the long-term scientific benefits will outweigh the short-term scientific risks,” Clampin said.
Also worth noting, Clampin explained, is that a commercial Hubble servicing mission would involve a new rendezvous, docking and undocking procedure, a spacecraft that had never visited the telescope before, and a new destination. That introduces a lot of variables, and these thoughts really reflect what some of these emails obtained by NPR suggest.
“The last time we went to Hubble was with the Space Shuttle, and it was quite a long time ago,” Clampin said. “And, of course, now Hubble is an old spacecraft; A lot of the people who were very involved in the early servicing missions have retired and there’s a lot of work to do to get back up to speed on how to do that.”
However, this is all to say that a commercial servicing mission is not out of the question in the future. As both presenters emphasized, it’s probably best to keep it simple delay such a risky mission while not absolutely necessary – and given that Hubble is doing quite well for the foreseeable future, it doesn’t seem absolutely necessary.
“There is more than a 70 percent chance that at least one gyroscope will be operational by 2035,” Cruz said. “We currently have four tools that are robust and highly productive, and reliability is expected to remain very high.
“So we don’t see Hubble on its last legs.”
