Commercial rescue mission for Hubble?

Sparks

Seen on \. today:

Space Tug to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's Rescue?

Orbital Recovery Corporation (ORC) is developing a Spacecraft Life Extension System or SLES for the life extension of GEO orbiting spacecraft. It has occurred to us that this system could be used for HST life extension as well. The SLES (patent pending) is a space tug currently in the advanced development stage that has the ability to lift multi-ton GEO spacecraft from intermediate orbits to GEO, take over the attitude control and station keeping of these large spacecraft. It could do the same for the HST.

This is not a technology that is beyond our grasp requiring hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Our solar electric propulsion system is in the advanced development stage, has at least three U.S. vendors of the Hall Effect electric thrusters, and could be ready to fly by a 2006 Shuttle mission to HST or lofted later for an autonomous rendezvous and docking similar to our standard mission scenario. We are working with the German Space Agency DLR to commercialize their expertise in flight proven software and existing hardware for our GEO application that can be extended to this mission. ORC and its partners have put over $2M dollars into the development of this system and has been independently validated by top U.S. aerospace consulting firms. We have a commercial price that is less than a typical Discovery class scientific mission. This is not a dreamsat mission as Deke Slayton used to say, it is a real option for the U.S. to preserve and extend the life of a telescope that has provided remarkable science and intensely beautiful images that has brought the magnificence of the universe into our lives.

The interesting thing about this idea is that last paragraph quoted above - this would be a commercial servicing mission. Has that ever been done before?

mike65

Good question! I don't know. All those expensive commecial satellites up there and has any of them ever had a service...? AFAIK they simply worked 'till they dropped and that was it.

I just did a google and all the articles seem to be talking about the potential of commercial servicing missions.

http://www.spaceandtech.com/digest/flash2002/flash2002-022.shtml

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,12543,334743-4,00.html

http://www.space.com/news/china_rocket_991207.html

http://www.iews.na.baesystems.com/business/00_news/sa1860.htm

Mike.

Capt'n Midnight

The EU could buy it and point it earthwards - it would pay for itself in the savings on false payments under the CAP..