NASA is inviting private companies to submit their proposals for boosting the telescope as a demonstration of how to perform similar operations on satellites.
The Hubble Space Telescope is now over 30 years old, first launched in 1990. The venerable telescope continues to produce valuable scientific data and beautiful images of space, but it won’t last forever, as sooner or later its orbit will decay which would cause the telescope to break apart in Earth’s atmosphere. But Hubble could keep operating for longer if its orbit were to be raised — a complex but doable operation that NASA is now considering.
An initial version of this plan saw discussions between SpaceX and NASA about boosting Hubble at no cost to the government. This involved a feasibility study into whether SpaceX’s Polaris program could be used for a Hubble-boosting mission. This study is non-exclusive and is still ongoing, meaning it could involve other companies as well as SpaceX.