NASA Rejects Jared Isaacman's Plan To Save The Hubble Telescope

Hubble's appearance in Earth's orbit (doc. NASA).

JAKARTA The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for 34 years in orbit. This space observer tool is at an altitude of 515 kilometers from Earth and is still collecting data without any problems.

Lately, Hubble has started to experience several problems, such as the wrong gyroscope to read the data incorrectly. With this problem, Hubble now only uses one gyroscope, while the other gyroscope is stored as a backup.

In fact, this problem is not so surprising because Hubble's age continues to grow. Orbit from this observatory is also slowly decreasing and decreasing. It is possible that this telescope will die in the 2030s.

Seeing Hubble's position in orbit, two plans emerged from scientists. Some scientists will let Hubble re-enter Earth and decay in the atmosphere, while other scientists want to push Hubble into higher orbit.

One of the people who wanted to save Hubble was Jared Isaacman, lead the Polaris Dawn program under SpaceX. The billionaire submitted a proposal to save Hubble.

NASA discussed the idea for a very long time and ultimately rejected the proposal. According to Mark Clampin, Director of the Astrophysical Division and NASA's Science Mission Directorate, efforts to save Hubble have many risks.

"Our current position is, after exploring the current commercial capabilities, we will not make any improvements," CLAmpin was quoted as saying by Space.

"We really appreciate the in-depth analysis carried out by the NASA team, SpaceX and Polaris programs."

Meanwhile, Hubble Project Manager Patrick Crouse believes Hubble is still worthy of operation and there is no serious risk. The best way to maintain Hubble's performance is to let the telescope operate until the end.

"We can operate Hubble very successfully and make science breakthroughs throughout the remainder of the 20s and until the 2030s," said Crouse.