But it's up to NASA to approve a rescue mission. Cue Aerosmith:
Momentus and Astroscale, two startups specializing in space infrastructure and orbital debris, want to collaborate and help boost NASA's aging Hubble Space Telescope into a safe orbit.
Hubble has far exceeded its original mission and expected run time, thanks to five space shuttle missions that sent astronauts to repair its instruments between 1993 and 2009.
NASA reckons there's more life in Hubble yet – but only if its altitude can be pushed higher to stop it falling and reentering Earth's atmosphere in the mid 2030s. Atmospheric drag has been slowly degrading the satellite's orbit, and it is expected to drop to 500 kilometers above Earth by about 2025.
In a bid to save the sinking telescope, NASA issued a Request for Information (RFI) in December to explore potential solutions from commercial vendors. NASA's not going to spend any money on this, but organizations willing to do the job would receive "technical information and technical consultation," from NASA Goddard.
Now Momentus and Astroscale have announced they're willing to collaborate on a potential future servicing mission to shift the Hubble Space Telescope into a safer orbit and remove any debris that could collide with the probe.
[...] "Leveraging Momentus's flight heritage with three orbital service vehicles on-orbit today and Astroscale's expertise in RPOD (rendezvous, proximity operations and docking), we found our product suites to be synergistic in support of a major NASA mission," said John Rood, Momentus CEO. "Even at 33, Hubble is fully capable of continuing its mission; where it is aging is in its orbital stability."
It's not known what other companies, if any, also responded to NASA's RFI, since the space agency promised to keep the information confidential. Last year, NASA agreed to study the technical feasibility of boosting Hubble with SpaceX's Dragon capsule, and began collecting data.
Neither that study nor the RFI guarantee that NASA will carry out a Hubble servicing mission, however. The space agency may well decide that, with newer tech in place and future exploration planned, Hubble's days are coming to an end.
(Score: 0, Troll) by DadaDoofy on Sunday May 14, @08:56PM (6 children)
You have to wonder if it could be repurposed for nefarious purposes unrelated to astronomy. If so, I could easily see the Biden administration handing it over to a "private" company based in China.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14, @09:27PM (3 children)
That would seem odd. Does Biden have children that are trying to get trademarks or something out of the Chinese market or something?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by DadaDoofy on Sunday May 14, @10:08PM (2 children)
No, just more Chinese deposits in his family member's bank accounts. https://news.yahoo.com/biden-family-received-millions-foreign-130029685.html [yahoo.com]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15, @12:10AM (1 child)
That news.yahoo link is pretty weak, the first para is:
If $10M is all they can find, that's chump change at that level. Here's some numbers that start to mean something, https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2022/attorney-general-james-sues-donald-trump-years-financial-fraud [ny.gov]
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15, @12:38AM
Don't forget to compare that to the amount of money overcharged to the Secret Service for staying on Trump properties.
And then there are the Saudis . . .
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14, @10:04PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA [wikipedia.org]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14, @11:10PM
Hunter will use it to look for his laptop/hookers/coke?