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/ The crew of Polaris Dawn (from left), Scott Poteet, Jared Isaacman, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon pose in front of a SpaceX Super Heavy rocket in South Texas.
John Krause/Polaris Project
NASA announced Thursday that it plans to study the use of SpaceX The Crew Dragon spacecraft lifts the aging Hubble Space Telescope to
Federal agency signed the “Space Act Agreement” with SpaceX to conduct a six-month study to determine the utility of the Dragon docking with a 32-year-old telescope and propelling it into a higher orbit. The study is not exclusive , which means other companies can come up with similar concepts with alternative rockets and spacecraft.
The agreement follows SpaceX and Project Polaris (a series of private missions self-funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman) with NASA over potential services including the Hubble Space Telescope Mission contact. Isaacman was the first private citizen to direct orbital spaceflight when he led a crew of four aboard SpaceX’s Dragon on the Inspiration4 mission in 2021. Through Polaris, he is seeking to bring private The boundaries of space exploration are stretched outward. Polaris’ first mission is scheduled for March 2023 on Dragon and will fly to an altitude of 1,400 kilometers, along with the first private spacewalk.
Benefits of lifting
This spacewalk experience may come in handy on Hubble as well as on the second Polaris mission.
One of the questions the new Hubble study will answer is the cost of such missions and their technical feasibility The main goal is to raise the Hubble’s altitude from the current 535 kilometers to 600 kilometers, the same altitude as when it was first launched in 1990. Since the fifth and final maintenance mission in 2009, the Hubble has been slowly declining, while This process is expected to speed up as the telescope gets lower and lower.
The telescope’s project manager, Patrick Crouse, said on a conference call with reporters that if the mission is not re-promoted , NASA may have to send a propulsion module to the telescope in the late 2020s. This will ensure that Hubble can re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in a controlled manner and land in the Pacific Ocean. The Dragon mission, which raises Hubble’s altitude, could add 15 or even 20 years to the orbital lifetime, Krauss said.
The study will also look at potential repair options, albeit with ha The detailed instrument replacements and major upgrades that Bob carried out during NASA’s space shuttle maintenance missions were different. Instead, engineers from NASA and SpaceX will evaluate the feasibility of replacing the gyroscope that controls the telescope’s pointing. Only three of the spacecraft’s six gyroscopes remained functional.
Not a Thursday conference call, officials They talked specifically about cost. No funding for this research will change hands, but if there is a viable path to docking the Crew Dragon spacecraft with Hubble and boosting the instrument, that will have to be worked out. It seems likely that Isaacman will contribute a significant portion of the mission cost, as he did in Inspiration4 and the original Polaris Dawn mission. But if NASA wants one or more of its astronauts to fly with Isaacman, the agency seems likely to provide some funding.
LONG HISTORY
This kind of private funding is far from unprecedented when it comes to space exploration. In his book The Long Space Age
, space economist Alexander MacDonald noted that of the 38 U.S. observatories built in the 1800s and early 1900s, there were 36 are primarily funded and operated through private financing.
“U.S. citizens through collective subscription campaigns and unique philanthropy, private Funded the increasingly expensive technology needed for continued development and the skies were explored for more than a century before NASA or the invention of liquid-fueled rockets,” MacDonald wrote.
In the book, he argues that the future of space exploration may involve A similar level of private investment, whether for commercial or charitable reasons.
NASA Science Director Thomas Zurbuchen is supporting this A potential public-private partnership mission, he said he welcomes commercial solutions to help NASA achieve its goals. “We’re always looking for crazy ideas, and that’s what we should be doing,” he said. “This one is really fascinating.”
NASA The study will be carried out and he said other vendor solutions in the interest of taxpayers will also be considered. But it’s unclear if another crewed spacecraft will be able to service Hubble in the near future, and time is running out for Hubble. Every additional year means it descends further down towards Earth, making the re-ascension less effective. For NASA, the benefits are clear, he said. Hubble continues to provide the world’s best optical view of the universe, and taxpayers have spent more than $10 billion building and flying it. Zurbuchen hopes to expand the value of this investment, especially now that it is possible to pair Hubble observations with James Webb Space Telescope observations in the infrared part of the spectrum.
“Hubble was a phenomenal success,” Zubchen said . “As we say, it’s doing great science.”
