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That's because this isn't the first time Hubble has been down to two working gyros. It happened before in 1999 (replaced a few months later), and they were worried it would happen again after 2003 when the Shuttles were grounded (actually got down to three/six working before replacement in 2009).



I wonder if after Polaris Dawn proves out spacewalking from Dragon, SpaceX will develop the capability to repair the Hubble once again.

I doubt it'll be from spacewalks on Dragon, given they probably can't support something as big as an MMU (unless they pull a really cool hat trick), but maybe with Starship.

I get that at some point it's more worthwhile to launch a new telescope (maybe one of those donated KENNENs from NRO), but Hubble is a big symbol of space exploration, and SpaceX is all about big symbols...


As a symbol, I think the best thing to do with Hubble is boost it to a long term orbit until it can be properly preserved for history.


The hardest part of this is actually grappling the satellite. Shuttle had the arm, how will spacex capture?


Dragon Arm(tm)?


Nah. The successor to Dragon will be Trogdor. They'll put one of those beefy arms on it for good measure.


Who would notice if they just quietly switched Hubble out with its military equivalent? /s


Everyone would, as the Hubble's mirror and instrument spec is ever so slighly different from the ground pointing espionage satellites. There are lots of failure modes that are acceptable in ground pointing operations but not in space pointing operations.




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