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The Hubble Space Telescope still shines in the eyes of astronomers after 36 years in orbit, but it is not as nimble as it once was. Left alone, the observatory will plunge back into the atmosphere in the early-to-mid-2030s, closing the book on one of the most famous scientific instruments of the century.

NASA last raised the orbit of Hubble in 2002, when the Space ShuttleColumbiavisited the observatory for a servicing mission. The final shuttle servicing flight in 2009 did not reboost the telescope’s orbit, and with the retirement of the shuttle fleet two years later, Hubble has steadily lost altitude with no way to stave off eventual destruction.

The space agency released a Request For Information (RFI) on Thursday asking commercial companies for ideas on how to reboost, service, or a controlled disposal of Hubble. Responses are due November 30. Specifically, NASA is looking for information about companies’ current and near-term capabilities for capturing Hubble and boosting it to an altitude of at least 373 miles (600 km), enhancing the telescope’s performance through, or guiding Hubble to a controlled reentry.

“The requirement includes that the boost and/or servicing mission must not harm the HST and that this mission is expected to occur by 2032,” NASA wrote in the RFI. The contractor would be responsible for providing the launch vehicle, servicing spacecraft, mission operations, and “crew if applicable.”

No commitments yet

NASA is not committing to buying a Hubble rescue mission, but officials want to know who might be interested in mounting such a mission, how much it would cost, and which companies would have a realistic shot at reaching Hubble before it falls out of orbit and burns up on reentry. Orbital dynamicists currently predict that it will likely happen in 2033 or 2034 without intervention, but reentry forecasts can change based on solar activity.

It took 24 years for Hubble, which lacks onboard propulsion, to glide from its 2002 altitude of 362 miles (583 km) to its current orbit some 292 miles (470 km) above Earth. A reboost to NASA’s requirement of 373 miles (600 km) would likely keep Hubble in orbit for at least 25 more years.

You’ll be forgiven if you’ve heard this before. Jared Isaacman, a billionaire commercial astronaut, approached NASA in 2022 about a servicing mission to Hubble with a team of astronauts on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. He proposed funding most of the mission, which would have reboosted Hubble by at least 30 miles (50 km). Engineers also studied using Dragon to attach a rescue pod onto Hubble with new gyroscopes to overcome problems with the telescope’sdebilitated pointing system.

NASA also released an RFI in 2022 for other teams to share how they might boost Hubble’s orbit. The agency received eight responses, including a joint robotic reboost proposal from Astroscale and Momentus to pair their satellite servicing technology and in-space transport capabilities.

Agency officials announced in 2024 they would pursue a reboost mission after reviewing the responses. Mark Clampin, the head of NASA’s astrophysics division at the time, said the servicing plans from Isaacman and SpaceX “were really just notional concepts.”

Fast forward to 2026. Isaacman is now NASA administrator, and the satellite servicing industry is maturing. Northrop Grumman launched the world’s most sophisticated robotic servicing satellite earlier this year in a partnership with DARPA, the Pentagon’s research and development agency. Smaller startups like Astroscale andStarfish Spacehave contracts for servicing and refueling demos with the US Space Force and NASA.

So it’s not unrealistic to think the commercial industry could reboost and service Hubble by 2032, given enough time and resources. That was one of the lessons learned from NASA’s last-minute bid to rescue one of its smaller space telescopes, named Swift, from an impending reentry.

NASA awarded a $30 million contract to a startup named Katalyst Space Technologies last year and gave the company just nine months to develop a mission to fly up to Swift, grab onto it, and propel it to a higher orbit, extending its useful lifetime. Remarkably, Katalyst built a rescue satellite and launched it by the deadline, and got within about 6 miles (10 km) of Swift. Ground teamsdecided not to move closerafter problems with Katalyst’s power and reaction control systems.

The Swift rescue attempt showed a servicing mission doesn’t have to cost billions of dollars, asone of NASA’s now-canceled servicing demo projectswas predicted to cost. But Hubble is a significantly more expensive asset than Swift, so if NASA goes forward with a rescue mission, the agency would like to give a contractor more than $30 million and nine months.

NASA does currently not have any funding allocated to procuring a Hubble reboost or servicing mission.

“Hubble still has important science ahead of it, and we should be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible,” Isaacman said in a NASA statement. “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. Extending Hubble’s life would mean more discoveries, more science, and more opportunities to expand our understanding of the Universe.”

A crewed servicing mission like the one Isaacman envisioned in 2022 is unlikely to happen now. SpaceX aims to retire its Crew Dragon fleet by 2030. In a post on X, Isaacman wrote that he expects the new RFI will “draw interest from robotics companies.”

NASA’s newer flagship observatories, sometimes described as successors to Hubble, are not actually one-for-one replacements. Hubble is tuned to observe the Universe in visible and ultraviolet light, while the Webb and Roman telescopes peer deeper into the infrared Universe. Astronomers will likely have to wait for the launch of NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s for an improvement on Hubble’s visible and ultraviolet vision.

“Commercial industry has rapidly evolved in recent years to offer new capabilities for in-space satellite capture and servicing,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “Given the time we have until Hubble’s anticipated reentry, we are eager to explore the breadth of possibilities to boost Hubble to a higher orbit while we develop the flagship mission to follow.”

Space Reporter

Space Reporter

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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