NASA Wants Hubble at 600 Kilometers. The Request Comes Without Money.

SeaPRwire – NASA published a request for information on 29 October asking companies how they would raise the Hubble Space Telescope, service it in place, or bring it down safely. Replies are due 30 November. Any mission would have to fly by 2032.

The calendar runs on two clocks. Companies have 30 days to answer a document that asks them to outline a mission, and any resulting flight would have to happen within roughly six years of that answer.

Hubble has no propulsion of its own. It orbits at roughly 470 kilometers, high enough that the residual atmosphere is thin but not absent, so the orbit decays year by year. The telescope is 36 years old, and it has been dropping since the last shuttle crew left it in 2009.

The three options are not variations on one plan. A boost changes the orbit and nothing else. Servicing means reaching the telescope and working on it. Disposal means a controlled re-entry rather than an uncontrolled one, which requires the same docking capability as the other two. In every case the company supplies the rocket, the servicing spacecraft and the mission operations, and a crew if the mission needs one.

The three missions also ask different things of the visiting vehicle. A boost needs thrust and navigation. Servicing needs a mechanical interface and the ability to work while holding position. Disposal needs enough control authority to choose where the telescope comes down. A company able to do one of these cannot necessarily do the other two.

None of that is funded. NASA has not committed to buying a mission and has set no money aside for one, which makes this a market survey rather than a procurement.

The document sets a floor for a boost at 600 kilometers and requires that the telescope not be damaged on the way. That is higher than the 583 kilometers Columbia left it at in 2002, and well above the 470 it has fallen to since.

NASA’s own analysis puts re-entry in 2033 or 2034. The agency estimates a 10 percent chance by September 2032 and a 50 percent chance by December 2033.

The telescope is heavy, and an uncontrolled fall leaves a small but non-zero chance that debris reaches people on the ground. That is the reason disposal sits on the list beside the two options that keep the observatory working.

This is the second time the agency has asked industry for ideas and the third time it has looked for outside help. In 2022, Jared Isaacman, then a private astronaut, offered to pay for most of a crewed Hubble mission on SpaceX’s Dragon. NASA collected eight responses that year and decided in 2024 not to pursue a reboost.

“If there are innovative and cost-effective ways to extend the life of an asset already on orbit, we owe it to the American taxpayer and the scientific community to explore them,” said Isaacman, who is now the agency’s administrator.

A crewed visit is harder to arrange than it was four years ago. SpaceX plans to retire Crew Dragon by 2030, and NASA has already turned to Boeing for additional astronaut flights. Isaacman expects this round to draw robotics companies, according to Ars Technica. Several startups are already raising money for hardware that would refuel or reposition spacecraft in orbit.

Swift, the agency’s smaller gamma-ray observatory, shows what the alternative looks like. Its science mission ended on 20 October, after drag below 275 kilometers made steady observations impossible. NASA expects it to re-enter within weeks.

The agency had hired a startup, Katalyst Space, to catch Swift and lift it. The robot ran into trouble and never reached the telescope. The US Space Force now expects it down within days, the Associated Press reported. Most of it will burn up, though some dense tungsten parts and mirror segments may survive.

The attempt ended before contact, which is the step all three options depend on.

Hubble has one thing Swift does not: a soft-capture mechanism, fitted by astronauts on the last shuttle servicing mission in 2009, built so a visiting vehicle can dock without a hard jolt. Anyone bidding for a boost inherits that fixture. It makes the docking problem smaller. It does not make it small.

A boost is the cheapest of the three in principle and the least useful if an instrument fails next year. Servicing buys time on the instruments but needs a vehicle able to hold station alongside the telescope while the work is done, and the request leaves the scope of that work to whoever answers it. Disposal produces no science and still requires a docking, which is why it is the option least likely to draw a bid.

A request for information is not a solicitation. It commits the agency to nothing.

The science case for keeping the telescope up does not rest on sentiment. Hubble observes in visible and ultraviolet light, and astronomers do not expect a replacement for that combination before the Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s. A re-entry in 2033 would open a gap measured in a decade or more. NASA’s own schedule puts the Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s, which is the earliest point at which that gap could close.

The commercial side has changed since 2022. In-orbit servicing has moved from concept studies to funded hardware, and the companies most likely to bid are the ones building refuelling and inspection vehicles for commercial satellites. A Hubble mission is a different order of job, and respondents have until 30 November to say how they would do it.

The request names no price range and no budget line, which leaves respondents to estimate what the agency would treat as reasonable, and to decide how much engineering detail to expose before any contract exists.

Whether any of this produces a mission depends on three things the request does not settle: a price the agency can defend, a budget line that does not exist yet, and whether 600 kilometers buys enough years to justify the flight.