SpaceX Crew Dragon may visit Hubble
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I tried to make the headline less click-baity then the original one, but that is hard with all the excitement.
Although none of the parties seem to have confirmed any detailed plans, it is a great start that they are thinking about prolonging the use of Hubble. Hubble has been in space since April 1990 and gave us amazing images of the cosmos. Over the course of its lifespan it has seen 5 service missions (SM1, SM2, SM3A, SM3B, SM4), the last one has been conducted in 2009. With the retirement of all space shuttles in 2011, no further service missions has been possible and the amazing engineers at NASA needed to find other ways to fix little problems.
Reading the Space.com quotes, it seems like SpaceX is checking options on what can be done. One might be simple boosting it, which I guess means to stabilize the orbit, the other option could be service missions. Which would also mean we would see EVA’s (extra-vehicular activity) performed from a crew dragon.
