NASA announced Thursday that it will study the possibility of using the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft to lift the Hubble Space Telescope to a higher orbit . NASA and SpaceX signed a Space Act Agreement to conduct a six-month study to determine the feasibility of docking the Dragon spacecraft with the 32-year-old Hubble and then raising its orbit. NASA’s goal is to raise Hubble’s orbital altitude from its current 535 kilometers to 600 kilometers, the same altitude it was at when it launched in 1990. Hubble’s altitude has been slowly declining since the last maintenance in 2009, and the process is expected to accelerate and eventually burn up into the atmosphere. Raising the orbit would extend Hubble’s lifespan by 15 to 20 years.
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