Hubble glitch renews talk about private servicing mission
spacenews.com
A problem with the Hubble Space Telescope has renewed discussion about whether and how NASA might approve a private mission to service it.

I cannot express just how much I want this to happen.

No attempt = hubble will fail and reenter

Attempt(failure) = same

Attempt(success) = hubble continues groundbreaking science and, after some time, can be brought back to earth via Starship to become a museum piece that inspires generations!!

  • Zippy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    Agree although I doubt it is ever coming back to the ground in one piece. Unless SpaceX just wants a PR piece. That being said, not even sure they are designed to land with a payload of that level.

    • sorghum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      42·
      11 months ago

      I mean, Elon did put his Tesla into orbit out to Mars. A PR boost to save one of the most beloved science projects sounds like a winner after the crap he’s been pulling with x.com fka twitter.

      • Zippy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        Not sure his rockets have the ability to bring back a large and heavy load. Currently the landing of the first stage requires an empty vessel and the second stage certainly does not have the capability. He would need to engineer a brand new rocket to do just this.

        • sorghum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          21·
          11 months ago

          The starliner configuration is designed to take 100 people into leo and back. I think that alone could be close to the 12 tons that Hubble weighs. It’ll be interesting to see capabilities when the variants are produced, specifically the cargo version for me.

          • n00b001@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            It would be great if/when that happens, but it’s a few years off the Elon deadline ATM, and doesn’t look close to operation soon

            • sorghum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

              I think the current mission being explored is docking a dragon trunk and boosting it and servicing it. That could buy us enough time until starship cargo is ready. STS-125 added a docking port for capture, which is going to be used by a satellite to deorbit if it comes time to do that.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    CST (Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules
    ~ Central Standard Time (UTC-6)
    STS Space Transportation System (Shuttle)
    Jargon Definition
    Starliner Boeing commercial crew capsule CST-100

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