After completing a successful orbital mission called Inspiration4 last year, Isaacman announced Polaris, a follow-up collaboration with SpaceX. This is a series of flights in orbit to demonstrate various technologies. The first mission, Polaris Dawn, is scheduled to launch towards the end of the first quarter of next year, marking the highest altitude astronaut mission since the Apollo moon landings and the first private spacewalk. We aim to include
Future Polaris missions, he said, will rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope, move it higher, and possibly make other repairs and upgrades to the space telescope, which is experiencing periodic outages due to technical glitches. can be done.
At 43.5 feet long and 14 feet wide, the space shuttle cargo bay was large enough to hold a Hubble, roughly the size of a school bus. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft is smaller than the Hubble at about 27 feet tall and 13 feet in diameter, including the trunk where the crew capsule jettisons before returning to Earth.
During the final shuttle mission to Hubble, astronauts installed a docking ring to help NASA deorbit Hubble when needed. A Crew Dragon may be able to link to the ring to raise the observatory’s orbit.
The next steps depend on the results of the feasibility study.
“We will look at Dragon’s capabilities and how they need to be changed to safely rendezvous and dock with Hubble,” Jensen said. “The details of how it will be done physically and how to do it safely in terms of trajectory have not yet been worked out.”
Dr. Zurbuchen said it’s worth pursuing. Some NASA experts spend their time working with SpaceX, but NASA doesn’t pay SpaceX to investigate ideas.
“We are always working on crazy ideas,” said Dr. Zurbuchen. “Frankly, that’s what we should be doing.”