Hubble glitch renews talk about private servicing mission
spacenews.com
A problem with the Hubble Space Telescope has renewed discussion about whether and how NASA might approve a private mission to service it.

I cannot express just how much I want this to happen.

No attempt = hubble will fail and reenter

Attempt(failure) = same

Attempt(success) = hubble continues groundbreaking science and, after some time, can be brought back to earth via Starship to become a museum piece that inspires generations!!

  • Zippy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    Not sure his rockets have the ability to bring back a large and heavy load. Currently the landing of the first stage requires an empty vessel and the second stage certainly does not have the capability. He would need to engineer a brand new rocket to do just this.

    • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      need to engineer a brand new rocket to do just this

      SpaceX is currently doing precisely that. The new rocket is called Starship, and both the first and second stages are designed to be reusable.

    • sorghum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      21·
      11 months ago

      The starliner configuration is designed to take 100 people into leo and back. I think that alone could be close to the 12 tons that Hubble weighs. It’ll be interesting to see capabilities when the variants are produced, specifically the cargo version for me.

      • n00b001@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        It would be great if/when that happens, but it’s a few years off the Elon deadline ATM, and doesn’t look close to operation soon

        • sorghum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          I think the current mission being explored is docking a dragon trunk and boosting it and servicing it. That could buy us enough time until starship cargo is ready. STS-125 added a docking port for capture, which is going to be used by a satellite to deorbit if it comes time to do that.