Well, That’s One Way to Save a Space Telescope From Falling Back to Earth
The Hubble Space Telescope is falling.
Not imminently, but it’s happening. The beloved observatory, which has spent decades revealing cosmic wonders from its perch a few hundred miles above Earth, does not have a propulsion system to maintain its altitude. According to NASA’s latest projections, the observatory could reenter Earth’s atmosphere as early as 2037—a grim fate that the agency has been anticipating for many years. When the last crew of astronauts visited Hubble for repairs, in 2009, they installed a special piece of hardware on its exterior so that, when that time came, a spacecraft could come up, clip on, and guide the telescope to a safe reentry through the atmosphere. On its way down, Hubble would streak through the skies like a meteor and then fall into the sea.
Well, that was to be the story. But the future of Hubble, a couple of billionaires use SpaceX technology to lift a national space treasure into a higher orbit and thus make it last longer.
