NASA asked private industry players to come with a plan and two startups gave an idea.

For those who don’t know yet, the Hubble Space Telescope which NASA launched 33 years ago is failing its orbit and is heading towards Earth. Like any artificial satellite, it falls slowly, but certainly. 

Because it’s a valuable tool for science and space exploration, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration issued a call for proposals in late 2022 for industry players, which were asked to suggest solutions how to rescue the telescope.

Hubble is currently healthy, but atmospheric drag will eventually cause it to re-enter our planet’s atmosphere at some point during the mid-to-late 2030s. Since launching in 1990, the telescope’s orbital height has fallen by roughly 30 kilometers, according to Gizmodo. 

NASA would very much like to keep it operational until 2040, as initially planned.

Two industry novices – Astroscale, a Japanese startup for space debris removal, and Momentus Space, a California-based space transportation and infrastructure services company – approached NASA with a joint plan to extend the Hubble’s lifespan. 

The plan, as detailed by BusinessWire, would see the two novices team up to launch a non-crewed rocket to deliver a water-propelled thruster to tug the Hubble Space Telescope up by some 50 kilometers. 

This is a higher orbit than originally occupied by the telescope and safer.

The thruster would then undock from the 11-ton, 13-meter long instrument and start removing the space junk along its new path.

Momentus Space already has operated a space tug craft last month, reporting that the mission was a success. Astroscale tested its space debris capture technique approximately the same period, but its nearly-successful mission was aborted at the last minute due to unexplained anomalies. NASA now must weight what are the chances that the Hubble mission ends well and the 1.5-billion-dollar telescope gets no damage, before decided whether to fund the operation.

One of the most famous pictures taken by Hubble - the Pillars of Creation. Credit: NASA

Hubble is the only telescope designed to be maintained in space by astronauts. Five space shuttle missions have repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope, including all five of the main instruments.

It is not clear whether this time the telescope needs repairs or maintenance works. Struggling with Earth’s gravity is currently the primary goal concerning the Hubble.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has been extensively cooperating with NASA, is said to be preparing its own plan to rescue the telescope.

Hubble was the humanity’s most advanced space telescope until NASA launched the James Webb Telescope in December 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope