NASA shoots down billionaire’s plan to fly up and fix Hubble Space Telescope

NASA is concerned that it is too dangerous.

The offer was rejected

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is on its last legs.

Ongoing problems with the aging spacecraft’s remaining gyroscopes, which help steer, have forced scientists to limit its science operations, according to an update Tuesday, with teams preparing for “single-gyre operations.” .

And while billionaire space tourist Jared Isaacman, who has already circled Earth inside a SpaceX crew dragon, has offered to foot the bill for a Hubble maintenance mission — the last of which took place in 2009, before the Space Shuttle program ended — NASA has now rejected it.

Basically, the agency is worried that Isaacman and his associates could end up doing more harm than good.

“After exploring current commercial capabilities, we will not pursue an upgrade now,” NASA’s director of astrophysics Mark Clampin said, as quoted by CBS News. While NASA “highly appreciates” their efforts, “our evaluation also raised a number of considerations, including potential risks such as premature loss of science and some technological challenges.”

However, the door is not yet fully closed.

“So while rebuilding is an option for the future, we believe we need to do some additional work to determine whether the long-term science return will outweigh the short-term science risk,” Clampin concluded.

Thanks, But No Thanks

It’s another intriguing development in the ever-changing relationship between NASA and the burgeoning private industry it’s increasingly relying on for access to space.

like NPR reported last month, NASA spent years chasing Isaacman’s bid to visit Hubble.

The entrepreneur and trained fighter pilot who was the commander of the first all-civilian space mission, which saw a crew of four orbit Earth inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in September 2021, has called for a maintenance mission . arguing that the ‘clock’ is running out in this game.

Isaacman will also attempt the first private spacewalk later this year.

But many concerns remain, with NASA pointing out that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon isn’t exactly designed for such a mission and lacks some key features over NASA’s spacecraft, which was used to service Hubble five times between 1993 and 2009.

For one, it doesn’t have an airlock or robotic arm, which could make Hubble difficult to repair.

In addition, even during NASA service missions, astronauts came very close to permanently damaging the space telescope.

Instead, NASA is looking for ways to squeeze more than another decade of life out of Hubble without a SpaceX-powered visit.

“We updated the reliability estimates for the gyro… and we still conclude that (we have) a greater than 70 percent probability of operating at least one gyro by 2035,” the project manager told reporters on Tuesday Hubble, Patrick Crouse.

More on Hubble: NASA experts worried billionaire space tourist will accidentally break Hubble Space Telescope while trying to fix it