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The Hubble space telescope for over thirty years has stood at the precipice of humanity’s small whirling island in space and gazed out since its launch and activation in April 1990. The namesake of its creator Dr. Edwin Hubble, lifted skyward by the Space Shuttle Discovery has helped mankind peer deeper into the past and farther into the distance than any other tool ever crafted by our hands. And is expected to continue to do so in concert with its younger upstart brother, the James Webb Space Telescope which is expected to come online in Summer 2022.
According to NASA, “Hubble has made more than one million observations. These include detailed pictures of the birth and death of stars, galaxies billions of light years away, and comet pieces crashing into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Scientists have learned a lot about the universe from these pictures. Many of them are beautiful to look at.”
An Uncertain Future For Hubble
Because the Hubble orbits the Earth just at the outer edge of our atmosphere, it does experience some drag, and this is exacerbated by solar activity like flares and coronal mass ejections. Meaning, at some point between 2028 and about 2040 depending on the variables, the telescope’s orbit will decay-causing it to burn up and eventually crash to Earth due to its large size it it is not ‘re-boosted’ or brought down in a controlled de-orbit.
In 2015 Space.com spoke to Hubble Mission Office Head Ken Sembach in Baltimore,
“The observatory’s in excellent condition right now,” “It’s actually in better condition than we would have expected five years after a servicing mission.”
STScI astrophysicist Mario Livio agreed with Sembach’s assessment. “At the moment, at least — and I’m knocking on wood here — I don’t see any showstopper any time soon, and hopefully there will be none,” Livio told Space.com.
As recently as 2020, President Trump was considering commercial proposals to make service visits to Hubble using Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser or the SpaceX Crew Dragon, or even the upcoming Orion craft.
Former astronaut John Grunsfeld citing reliability studies maintained that there was a high probability that Hubble’s main systems and subsystems could continue to operate at least through the mid-2020s.
“I do believe that Hubble can continue to operate for a few more years, and we hope that it has a lot of overlap with the James Webb Space Telescope,” he said. Regarding a service mission he added, “I wouldn’t preclude the possibility, because we have the capability coming online in the next ten years, that you could send a repair mission up to Hubble,” said Grunsfeld.
Hubble has sent us over a million images that have sparked the imagination of billions, and hopefully will continue to do so for years to come. WATCH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V08M1NcdJQ&t=3s
