It's great Jared and the team at Polaris can help extend it, I hope Starship or similar will capture it and bring it back to earth, it deserves to be in a museum not end in a fireball
As usual, Scott Manley did an excellent analysis of the possibilities and the challenges:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXarNOCMV3c" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXarNOCMV3c</a>
It's amazing to see a 32 year old chunk of hardware remain active and useful to this day. And projected to remain functioning for another 15 years.<p>While James Webb has become the new celebrity satellite, Hubble is still cranking out scans every week. It even caught some of the DART impact last week[1].<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-hubble-capture-detailed-views-of-dart-impact" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/webb-hubble-captur...</a>
We could have another dozen Hubble clones in orbit and they'd still be booked solid for years. It's just such a fantastic piece of kit, decades later. I see the value in servicing it, but I'd be even happier to see a few Falcon Heavy launches with modern versions of Hubble. In my opinion it's the least SpaceX could do for the brutal damage to the night sky Starlink has done.
I wonder if this is the equivalent of me having some 40 year old Nikon camera lenses.<p>Lenses are still great, sharp and clear.<p>But I’ve updated the camera sensors, housing etc over the years - all while still using the same decades old lenses.
If the fairing was just a little bit longer on the Falcon 9 it could easily launch another one of these. But the dang thing cost $4.3 billion just to build and launch so I can see why they would want to repair instead of re-build. Especially since Dragon is so freaking cheap compared to the shuttle. However, outfitting Dragon for EVA would be a freaking PITA considering the certification process. More likely they would have to launch an EVA module separately that Dragon would dock to that had the necessary airlock to remove the need to depressurize Dragon.<p>I could see them designing a cheaper less dear version of Hubble now that launch costs are so much lower. But repairing it definitely makes a lot of sense.
The holy grail here is to figure out a way to not just boost it, but start doing some part replacement work on Hubble.<p>There's wonky computers, gyroscopes, and likely other parts that just need a swap out. Hubble is designed to let people do this. The only problem is that doing it today requires a person in a very bulky space suit that won't fit through the Dragon's door.<p>Perhaps a robot?
"Without a boost, the thrusterless telescope is expected to re-enter and burn up around 2037"<p>If the government pays for this, hopefully they wait for the cost to orbit to fall after Starship is operational. Seemingly there's no hurry.
One key thing is that they realised how to fix the gyroscopes which kept failing, with the new design gyroscopes it can keep pointing, replacing those would require a crew.