NASA wants industry proposals to reboost Hubble by Nov. 30. With no propulsion and reentry projected for 2033-2034, here's what a mission would need to do.
NASA — Astronaut Steven L. Smith during the first spacewalk of the STS-103 servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, December 22, 1999
NASA wants to know what the commercial space industry can actually deliver for Hubble. On Oct. 29, the agency issued a Request for Information asking companies to describe their capabilities for reboosting, servicing, and eventually disposing of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has had no way to maintain its own orbit since the last Space Shuttle visit in May 2009. Responses are due by 3 p.m. EST on Nov. 30, filed through SAM.gov.
This is not a contract award. It is NASA asking the market a direct question: who can raise Hubble’s orbit, who can improve what it can still do scientifically, and who can bring it down safely when its time is finally up. The answers will shape whether one of astronomy’s most productive instruments gets another decade, or becomes the largest piece of planned space debris NASA has had to manage since the Shuttle era ended.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman put the agency’s position plainly: Hubble “still has important science ahead of it,” and NASA should pursue any reasonable path to keep it working. Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, called the telescope “a national icon” that changed how humanity sees the universe. Neither framed this as sentimental. Hubble is still producing peer-reviewed science more than three and a half decades after launch, and the RFI is NASA trying to find out, concretely, what it would cost to keep that going.
Key parameters
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| RFI issued | Oct. 29, 2026 |
| Response deadline | 3 p.m. EST, Nov. 30, 2026 |
| Launch altitude (1990) | ~612 km |
| Last crewed servicing | May 2009 (STS-125) |
| Predicted uncontrolled reentry | 2033-2034 |
| Latest feasible mission launch | by 2032 |
| Capabilities requested | reboost, servicing, controlled disposal |
What NASA Is Actually Asking For
The RFI lays out three distinct capabilities, and companies can respond to any or all of them. The first is a reboost mission: raise Hubble’s orbit enough to meaningfully extend its science life, without necessarily touching the instruments themselves. The second is servicing proper, upgrading or replacing hardware to improve what Hubble can observe, the kind of work only Shuttle astronauts have ever performed on this telescope. The third is end-of-life disposal, either a safe controlled reentry that avoids populated areas or a stable graveyard orbit, which is the part of the request that treats Hubble’s eventual death as seriously as its possible extension. No company is named in the RFI itself. NASA is deliberately casting wide before narrowing to an actual acquisition, and the 30-day response window is short enough to suggest the agency already has a sense of who is likely to answer. Respondents are expected to address technical feasibility, rough cost, and schedule for whichever capability they are proposing, information NASA needs before it can decide whether to issue a formal solicitation at all. An RFI carries no funding and no guarantee of a follow-on contract. It is the step that lets NASA write a realistic acquisition plan instead of guessing at what industry can price.
Three Decades Without a Boost
Hubble launched in 1990 at roughly 612 kilometers, an altitude chosen to balance observing conditions against atmospheric drag. Five Shuttle servicing missions kept it not just scientifically current but physically healthy, since each crewed visit included a reboost as a matter of course. The last of those missions, STS-125 in May 2009, was also the last time anything touched Hubble’s orbit on purpose. Every kilometer of altitude lost since then has been pure atmospheric drag, unopposed, for going on seventeen years. The telescope has sagged from its original altitude to well under 500 kilometers, and the decline is not linear. The lower it sinks, the denser the atmosphere it flies through, and the faster the remaining altitude disappears.
Why the Reentry Date Keeps Moving
Estimates of when Hubble reenters without intervention have ranged from as early as 2028 to as late as the late 2030s, and the spread is not sloppy forecasting, it reflects how sensitive drag-driven decay is to solar activity. More intense solar cycles heat and expand the upper atmosphere, thickening the drag Hubble experiences in ways that are only predictable a few years out. NASA’s current working estimate, reentry between 2033 and 2034, is the number driving the RFI’s timeline: the agency believes a servicing or reboost mission would need to launch by 2032 to matter, which leaves roughly six years to solicit, select, build, and fly whatever this RFI leads to. For the mechanics of why altitude decay accelerates as drag increases, see how orbital perturbations force satellites into constant station-keeping.
Not NASA’s First Attempt to Ask
This is not NASA’s first pass at the question. An earlier agreement explored whether a SpaceX Dragon flying a Polaris Program mission could perform a Hubble reboost, a study that never converted into a flown mission. NASA has also said previously it would consider a Hubble reboost if operating costs could be brought down, and Astroscale and Momentus jointly answered an earlier request for information with a proposed commercial servicing concept. None of that produced a contract. What makes this RFI different is less the ambition than the specificity: a named deadline, three clearly separated capability asks, and a reentry estimate concrete enough to backward-plan a launch date from.
What Extending Hubble Actually Buys
Hubble’s scientific case for survival does not rest on nostalgia. Its ultraviolet and visible-light capability remains largely unduplicated even with Webb in operation, since Webb is optimized for infrared and cannot cover the same wavelength range. A functioning Hubble bridges the gap until NASA’s next flagship observatory, built to hunt for habitable worlds, is ready to fly, a timeline measured in years rather than months. For the broader context of what comes after Hubble and Webb, see why future space telescopes gather at Lagrange points. There is also a disposal cost to weigh against the servicing cost. Hubble masses over 11,000 kilograms, large enough that an uncontrolled reentry would need the same kind of debris risk accounting NASA applies to any defunct satellite of its size, and large enough that a targeted deorbit is the safer default rather than an optional extra. A commercial mission that both extends Hubble’s science life and guarantees a controlled ending solves two problems with one spacecraft, which is likely why NASA bundled reboost, servicing, and disposal into a single RFI instead of three separate ones. Whether that bridge gets built commercially now depends on what lands in NASA’s inbox by Nov. 30.