NASA is turning to the commercial space industry for help in saving the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most productive scientific instruments ever placed in orbit. The agency is seeking outside ideas as the observatory slowly loses altitude and drifts toward a fiery re-entry over Earth.
Hubble was launched into low-Earth orbit in 1990 and has produced some of the most striking images of the universe over more than three decades. Its orbit has been decaying gradually, and without intervention the telescope is on a path that would end with it burning up in the atmosphere. The problem is not sudden, which is why the timing of any response matters so much.
The mission designed to address the problem would not launch until 2032, but the source material indicates that planning must begin soon if Hubble is to be saved. That timeline is what is driving NASA to look beyond its traditional contractors and toward private firms that have expanded rapidly in recent years. Waiting for a conventional procurement cycle could leave too little margin for a rescue effort to be assembled in time.
Commercial companies have increasingly taken on roles once reserved for government agencies, including launch services, cargo delivery and servicing of spacecraft. NASA's outreach suggests the agency sees potential value in the capabilities those companies have built, particularly for work that would need to reach a telescope already in orbit. Any solution would have to account for the telescope's age, its design and the fact that it was never built to be serviced by a robotic vehicle.
The effort highlights a broader challenge facing astronomy. Hubble has delivered decades of discoveries, from images of distant galaxies to observations of objects within our own solar system, and its continued operation depends on decisions made well before any rescue spacecraft could fly. Whether NASA will find a workable commercial partner, and how such a partnership would be structured, remains open. The source material does not specify the proposed approach, the companies that might take part or the cost of the effort, and those details are still to be determined.
Source: sea.mashable.com
18
