en.Wedoany.com Reported - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has stated that it would be willing to raise the orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope if its operating costs could be reduced. This statement comes as NASA prepares to attempt an orbit boost for an astronomical spacecraft currently in a decaying orbit.

NASA announced on June 5 that the "Link" service spacecraft, built by Katalyst Space, has arrived at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The spacecraft had been undergoing final preparations at Katalyst's facility in Colorado after completing environmental testing at the Goddard Space Flight Center last month. At Wallops, NASA will integrate Link with Northrop Grumman's Pegasus XL rocket, with launch expected later this month, though NASA has not yet announced a specific launch date.

In September 2024, NASA awarded Katalyst a $30 million contract to develop and launch Link. Once in orbit, Link will rendezvous and dock with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. Swift is a gamma-ray observatory whose low-Earth orbit is steadily decaying due to atmospheric drag. Link will attempt to boost Swift's orbit, allowing it to continue its observations. NASA acknowledges this is a high-risk mission: Link will be Katalyst's first mission, and Swift was not designed for in-orbit servicing.

"This is always a long-shot effort," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, at a meeting of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee on June 1. "Any time you try to go from a conference room to a launch pad in a year, you're taking a lot of risk, and that's where we are now." He noted that NASA is doing this because of the high return on investment in extending Swift's lifespan at a fraction of the replacement cost. "Additionally, we think this is a good way to send a demand signal to the commercial sector—that we are willing to do things like this when they make sense from a return-on-investment perspective."

This could include raising the orbit of a larger spacecraft—the Hubble Space Telescope—whose orbit is also gradually decaying. In January, at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Jennifer Lotz, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, said orbital models give a median reentry date of 2033. Domagal-Goldman said the effort to boost Swift's orbit provides a model for Hubble. "These orbit-raising operations are now not only feasible for our agency, but also lower in cost than I think they were," he said. "That really makes the return on investment more attractive."

However, Hubble's operating costs are a prominent issue. NASA spent $98.8 million on Hubble in fiscal year 2025, second only to the James Webb Space Telescope. "It was built in a different era, and it costs more to maintain and get the best science out of it," he said. NASA's Science Mission Directorate has been grappling with the costs of extended missions, and officials have discussed wanting to reduce costs to free up funding for new missions. Domagal-Goldman said NASA needs to find ways to lower Hubble's operating costs to make an orbit boost feasible. "We are open to raising Hubble's orbit," he said. "Therefore, we must first figure out how to reduce operating costs." He did not specify how much NASA seeks to reduce operating costs. He said that if feasible, Hubble could potentially operate for many more years after an orbit boost. "It could serve as a great bridge to the Habitable Worlds Observatory," the next-generation large optical and ultraviolet space telescope NASA is developing, planned for launch in the 2040s.

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