NASA is asking the commercial space industry what can be done about Hubble. The agency has posted a request for information, a contract opportunity notice on SAM.gov rather than a request for proposals, inviting companies to describe how they would service the Hubble Space Telescope. The options NASA lists run in opposite directions: a vehicle that grapples the observatory and performs a controlled reentry and disposal, a boost of its orbit to at least 600 kilometres, or a mission to enhance its performance and extend its expected on orbit lifetime. Any mission would need to happen by 2032 and must not harm the telescope.
The deadline is physics. Hubble has no propulsion system, so without intervention its reentry will be uncontrolled, and the spacecraft is massive enough that debris reaching the ground is a real if remote risk. NASA estimates a 10 percent chance of reentry by September 2032, rising to 50 percent by December 2033, and increased solar activity can accelerate atmospheric drag beyond those estimates, as the end of the Swift mission recently showed. The last servicing mission was the Space Shuttle flight STS-125 in May 2009, expected at the time to add five years of life; Hubble is still returning science almost 17 years later, recently switching from three gyroscopes to one to stretch its remaining pointing life.
The case for rescue is demand. NASA reports Hubble observing time is oversubscribed seven to one, and no replacement is expected before the Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s; neither the James Webb Space Telescope nor the coming Nancy Roman telescope substitutes for it. A soft capture mechanism fitted during STS-125 makes docking easier than a grapple, and vehicles in the class of Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle show on orbit servicing is commercially real, though Hubble is an order of magnitude harder. Before becoming NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman advocated for a SpaceX mission to boost Hubble; the idea was rejected then and could now be revived in commercial form.
NASA has given no indication of what it expects to pay, and an RFI commits it to nothing. What it does is start the clock publicly: the choice between a rescue market for flagship science spacecraft and a controlled disposal of a 36 year old observatory will be made against an immutable reentry timeline.