Is NASA Going To Let The Hubble Telescope Burn Up?

SERVICING THE HUBBLE

Astronauts Steven L. Smith and John M. Grunsfeld are photographed during the December 1999 Hubble servicing mission of STS-103.

NASA/MSFC

Last month, six astronauts convened at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City to discuss the 2009 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. As it approached its 20th birthday, the telescope was in desperate need of an upgrade; the orbital optics, batteries, and other equipment had slowly deteriorated due to sun exposure and age.

NASA deployed Space Shuttle mission STS-125, the last Hubble servicing mission, to renovate the telescope in a series of space walks. “For a lot of missions, they say don’t worry about things, we can always get that done next time, you don’t have to try and rush,” Scott Altman, the former mission commander, tells Popular Science. “But we knew this was the last time anyone was going, so anything we didn’t get done, wasn’t going to get done.”

Eventually Earth's gravity will pull the telescope to a fiery death.
Despite the pressures of the operation, the crew members recalled how they managed to upgrade Hubble as much as possible during five long, arduous space walks, ensuring the telescope’s operational capabilities well beyond the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/last-mission-hubble-why-nasa-going-let-telescope-burn

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