A private consortium wants to help extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope, while also cleaning up orbital debris in the neighborhood.
Aerospace companies Momentus and Astroscale sent a proposal to NASA after the agency issued a request for information in December 2022 regarding a non-exclusive SpaceX study announced in September. (SpaceX’s unfunded proposal is considering options to put the 33-year-old Hubble Space Telescope into a “re-boosted” higher orbit, but other companies are allowed to put forward their own ideas, too.)
Momentus CEO John Rudd said May 9 statement (Opens in a new tab). Momentus, however, has “dangerously low cash reserves” as of its first-quarter financial results on May 11, according to the load space (Opens in a new tab). Just two days before the results were announced, Momentus published the joint Hubble proposal with Astroscale.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time
Startups have a lot of experience in the space. Astroscale, founded in 2013, launched the ELSA-d space debris display mission in March 2021. The mission aims to test its junk capture technology with a simulated piece of debris. Testing was halted in May 2022 due to “abnormal spacecraft conditions”. Astroscale plans another effort in 2024.
Momentus, which began operations in 2017, has launched several test flights of a space tug called Vigoride on SpaceX rideshare flights. The Hubble Space Telescope’s Astroscale-Momentus proposal would also use Vigoride, which would be launched on a yet-to-be-identified rocket. After the tug reaches space, it will use Astroscale technology for rendezvous, proximity and docking operations to access the telescope. Eventually, Vigoride will move Hubble’s orbit up 31 miles (50 kilometers), and then transform into a new mission to clean up orbital debris near Hubble.
Quarterly results showed that Momentus spends nearly $8 million a month and has only $40 million in cash on hand. While the cash flow comes from several service agreements and the US Space Force, the outlay is roughly equivalent to five months off runway, according to Payload. Momentus also has a market capitalization of $40 million, so raising funds for more liquidity “will be a challenge,” Payload’s report said.
Another problem arose in March, when the Nasdaq gave Momentus a warning to delist, as shares of the space startup fell below $1 each, According to CNBC (Opens in a new tab). Momentus has about 180 days, until late September, to raise its share price again.
Related: The Silicon Valley bank collapse ripples through the space industry
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Hubble flew into space in April 1990 aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Its altitude — 335 miles (540 km) above Earth as of late 2022 — is now about 38 miles (60 km) lower than its initial orbit. Hubble continues to gradually decrease thanks to the clouds caused by the Earth’s atmosphere, which is very thin, but not very high.
Hubble remains healthy otherwise, thanks to five space shuttle missions to service the telescope and enhance its orbit, the most recent of which happened in 2009. NASA retired the 30-year-old shuttle fleet in 2011, leaving no current servicing options.
Hubble’s pioneering research has brought him a Nobel Prize and thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers. It is now working in conjunction with NASA’s more powerful James Webb Space Telescope to reveal detailed information about our solar system and the deep universe. Webb launched in 2021 and is now working in deep space to look back beyond Hubble’s groundbreaking “deep field” studies showing the early evolution of the galaxy.
At its current near-Earth altitude, Hubble has a 50% chance of falling back to our planet in 2037, Patrick Cruz, Hubble project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said during a briefing in September 2022. The press conference was discussing The SpaceX proposal, which is being conducted under an unfunded space law agreement with NASA.
Related: How are Hubble Space Telescope images made?
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To be clear, there is no approved Hubble rescue mission yet. Any such effort would occur at no cost to NASA, according to the terms of the agreement discussed in September 2022.
SpaceX’s Hubble effort will be in conjunction with the Polaris program. Polaris is a private space mission program, funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, that aims to fly Isaacman and other commercial astronauts of his choosing using SpaceX’s Dragon and Starship vehicles. (The first mission of the trilogy, Polaris Dawn, will launch no later than September of this year; Isaacman first flew into space on another mission he funded, called Inspiration4, in September 2021.)
“We’ll look at Dragon’s capabilities and how it will need to be modified in order to safely rendezvous and dock with Hubble,” Jessica Jensen, Vice President of Customer Operations and Integration for SpaceX, said during the September 2022 briefing. “Details of exactly how to do it physically, and how to do it safely also from a track point of view – that’s all that needs to be determined.”
The SpaceX-Polaris proposal would extend the telescope’s life by 20 years, it said Sunday (May 14). Tweet from Isaacman (Opens in a new tab).
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SpaceX has been criticized for the effects of the Starlink constellation on astronomy, including on Hubble. In March 2023, a study reviewed in the journal Nature Astronomy found that the probability of finding satellite trails in Hubble images is now 5.9%, compared to 3.7% in 2002. Starlink is a constellation of 4,000 satellites that aims to bring fast broadband to the population the outliers on earth; SpaceX hopes to send up to 40,000 Starlinks aloft if the US Federal Communications Commission approves.
NASA is still studying the Hubble proposals issued in response to its request for information, which Closed January 24, 2023 (Opens in a new tab). Other consortia may have submitted bids. NASA officials said the studies will be useful for future efforts to extend the operational lives of other satellites through refueling operations, orbital boosts and other efforts that potentially save costs.
Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said December 2022 statement. (Opens in a new tab) “As our fleet grows, we want to explore a wide range of opportunities to support the most powerful and superior science missions possible.”
At least two other NASA telescopes are being studied for the rescue. According to a October 2022 story (Opens in a new tab) From IEEE Spectrum, Northrop Grumman has a feasibility study underway for a servicing mission for the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched in 1999.
Chandra is assembled by TRW, which is now part of Northrop Grumman, and Northrop subsidiary SpaceLogistics already offers Intelsat communications satellites using space tugs it calls Mission Extension Vehicles. SpaceLogistics is working on a newer version of the vehicle with a robotic arm on board, which may be able to repair orbiting spacecraft.
Also in the works is a proposal to revive NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which was launched in 2003. Aerospace technology company Rhea Space Activity He won a $250,000 scholarship (Opens in a new tab) from the US Space Force last week to conduct an early-stage study. Spitzer is quite far from Earth, roughly 2 AU (two distances between Earth and the Sun); The extreme distance is necessary to keep the telescope cool to search for infrared light (thermal radiation).
Partnering with RIAA are several heavyweight financial backers, including the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Blue Sun Ventures, and Lockheed Martin. Spitzer retired in 2020 in favor of Webb, a $10 billion observatory that NASA has given priority over some other astrophysics programs to make room as Webb’s budget grows beyond expectations.
Elizabeth Howell is co-author of “Why am I taller (Opens in a new tab)? (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @employee (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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