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September 30, 2022
12:07 pm
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2 minutes
The US space agency (NASA) announced Thursday that it will study with “SpaceX” the feasibility of entrusting the company owned by Elon Musk with the task of raising the “Hubble Space Telescope” to a higher orbit in order to extend its lifespan.
A slow regression is recorded in the orbit of the famous telescope, which has been located since 1990 at an altitude of 540 km above the Earth’s surface.
This decline is due to the atmospheric friction that the telescope still encounters, albeit in small proportions.
Hubble does not have any self-propelled means, and it was the US space shuttle missions that corrected its altitude in the past.
As for the proposed new mission, it is to use the “Dragon” missile of the “SpaceX” company for this purpose.
“A few months ago, SpaceX contacted NASA with the idea of conducting a study to see if a commercial flight crew might help lift” the Hubble site, NASA scientific director Thomas Zurbuchen told the media, adding that the agency accepted to conduct this study, which It does not entail any financial cost.
Zurbuchen stressed that there are currently no concrete plans to implement or finance any mission of this kind, pending further study of all the technical difficulties involved.
One of the most prominent obstacles is the lack of a robotic arm in the “Dragon” rocket, unlike the case with the space shuttles, which therefore requires modifications.
SpaceX proposed the idea in partnership with Polaris, a private spaceflight company.
Hubble is one of the most important scientific tools in history, and it continues to make important discoveries, including this year’s observation of the most distant single star ever, “Erndel”, whose light took 12.9 billion years to reach Earth.
Hubble project manager Patrick Krause said that the telescope is currently scheduled to remain in service until the end of the current decade, with the telescope likely to lose 50 percent of its orbit by 2037.
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