![]() SpaceX's private Polaris Dawn crew talks about their ambitious mission (exclusive) SpaceX's private all-civilian Inspiration4 mission in pictures The best Hubble Space Telescope photos of all time Related: SpaceX's historic Inspiration4 mission in photos Indeed, there's already an architecture in place that could accommodate such a flight - the Polaris Program, a set of three SpaceX missions organized and led by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who commanded the history-making Inspiration4 mission to Earth orbit last year. If the feasibility study returns promising results, a Dragon mission to Hubble could launch sooner than you might think. "You'd add easily 15 to perhaps 20 years of orbit life to the mission if you could achieve that altitude," Crouse said. Getting Hubble back up to its initial altitude of 373 miles (600 km) could potentially allow the observatory to keep working for many more years to come. NASA would likely aim to launch the deorbit mission by the end of the 2020s, Crouse said.īut that's without an orbit boost. That will require launching a robotic mission to the telescope to haul it down safely. NASA won't let things come to that, however the agency plans to deorbit Hubble in a controlled fashion when its observing days are done. The telescope currently zooms around Earth at an altitude of about 335 miles (540 kilometers), roughly 38 miles (60 km) lower than its initial orbit.Īt its current altitude, Hubble has a 50% probability of falling back to Earth in 2037, Patrick Crouse, Hubble project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during today's briefing. Just the other day, for example, it snapped photos of the Didymos asteroid system shortly after NASA's DART probe intentionally slammed into one of its two constituent space rocks.īut Hubble's orbit has decayed a bit over the past 33 years due to atmospheric drag. Hubble is in good health and continues to return amazing and informative photos of the cosmos. The feasibility study might point planners toward an uncrewed mission, with Dragon or perhaps even a different type of vehicle. "Details of exactly physically how that's done, and how we also safely do that from a trajectory point of view - that's all to be worked out."Īnd a Dragon Hubble mission, should it come to pass, wouldn't necessarily need to be crewed, she added. "We're going to be looking at Dragon capabilities and how they would need to be modified in order to safely rendezvous and dock with Hubble," Jensen said. (The agency is participating via an unfunded Space Act Agreement.) The new announcement concerns a feasibility study, which is expected to last six months and involves no NASA money. To be clear: No SpaceX mission to Hubble is currently in the works.
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