NASA has asked private companies to come up with a plan to save the Hubble Space Telescope before it slowly sinks out of orbit and falls back to Earth. The agency issued a formal Request for Information on October 29, 2026, inviting industry to propose a mission to lift Hubble to a higher orbit, service it, or bring it down safely — and it set a deadline of November 30 for companies to respond.
The announcement, published by NASA on October 30, is not yet a rescue mission, a contract, or a funded program. It is a fact-finding step: NASA wants to know who could realistically reach Hubble, what the job would cost, and how it could be done without harming a telescope that has been working in space for more than 35 years. NASA says Hubble is likely to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in 2033 to 2034 if nothing is done, and any boost or servicing mission would need to fly by 2032.
What NASA Is Asking For
The request, issued by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and posted on the federal SAM.gov system, lays out three distinct options for industry. A company could develop a servicing vehicle that captures Hubble in low Earth orbit and boosts it to an altitude of at least 600 kilometers, or about 373 miles. It could fly a servicing mission to improve the telescope's performance and make it more resilient, extending its working life. Or it could carry out a safe, controlled re-entry or orbital disposal at the end of Hubble's mission.
In every case, the request sets one strict condition: the mission must not harm the telescope. Companies must describe how they would capture and control Hubble, the lowest altitude from which they could still reach it, and the earliest date they could fly. Goddard would provide technical information and expert consultation, according to reporting on the notice.
NASA has been clear about what this step is not. A Request for Information is not a request for proposals, and it carries no government commitment to buy a mission. Reports on the notice say there is currently no budget line for a rescue, and no indication of how much NASA expects to pay. A formal competition could follow, but no date for one has been set.
"Hubble still has important science ahead of it, and we should be looking at every reasonable opportunity to keep it delivering for as long as possible," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. "If there are innovative and cost-effective ways to extend the life of an asset already on orbit, we owe it to the American taxpayer and the scientific community to explore them. Extending Hubble's life would mean more discoveries, more science, and more opportunities to expand our understanding of the universe."
Why Hubble Is Sinking
Hubble's problem is simple orbital physics, and it has no way to fix it on its own. Unlike most satellites, the telescope carries no propulsion system to maintain its orbit. Every spacecraft in low Earth orbit drags through a thin trace of atmosphere, and over time that drag pulls it lower and lower. With no engine to push back, Hubble has been losing altitude ever since the last time a spacecraft raised its orbit.
Hubble was launched in 1990 and, according to reports, began its mission at an altitude of roughly 612 kilometers. The last time its orbit was raised was in 2002, when the space shuttle Columbia visited the observatory for a servicing mission. The final shuttle servicing flight, in 2009, did not include a reboost, and the shuttle fleet was retired two years later, leaving Hubble with no way back up.
Since then, the decline has been steady. Reports put Hubble's current orbit at about 470 kilometers, or roughly 292 miles, down from about 583 kilometers, or 362 miles, in 2002 — a drop of more than 100 kilometers over 24 years.
NASA's own analysis puts the most likely re-entry window in 2033 to 2034. Reporting on the notice cites a July 2026 lifetime analysis with a 10 percent probability of re-entry by September 2032 and a 50 percent probability by December 2033, a reminder that forecasts can shift with solar activity and that the 2032 mission deadline is not arbitrary. A reboost to at least 600 kilometers, according to reports on the plan, would likely keep Hubble in orbit for at least 25 more years.
A Second Chance After Earlier Plans
This is not the first time a Hubble rescue has been discussed, and the history helps explain why NASA is now asking the whole industry rather than a single company. According to reports, SpaceX studied a Crew Dragon reboost in 2022, and Isaacman himself had earlier proposed a Hubble reboost through his Polaris Program, to be carried out using a SpaceX Dragon capsule. NASA declined that Polaris proposal in June 2024.
Other companies answered an earlier call as well, with reports naming Astroscale and Momentus among those that responded. None of those efforts produced a mission, and Hubble has kept sinking in the meantime. The new request is broader: any company with a credible capture, servicing, or disposal concept can respond, whether it uses a robotic spacecraft, a crewed vehicle, or a combination of both. The request even notes that a contractor would supply the launch vehicle, the servicing spacecraft, and mission operations, plus a crew if applicable.
Hubble, meanwhile, is still working. NASA says the telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries. It is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency; Goddard manages mission operations, while the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. Reporting on the notice says demand for observing time exceeds supply by seven to one.
What This Means
For astronomers, the request is both encouraging and sobering. It is encouraging because NASA is formally, publicly, asking how Hubble could be saved, after years in which a rescue was discussed but never commissioned. It is sobering because the request concedes that time is short, money is not yet committed, and a rescue is far from guaranteed. An idea submitted by November 30 is only the first step in a process that would still need funding, a contract, a spacecraft, and a launch — all before 2032.
For NASA, the request is also a test of a wider strategy. The agency is increasingly asking private companies to do jobs it once did itself. Hubble would be the most delicate version of that test yet: the target is a 35-year-old observatory that was never designed to be grabbed by a robotic spacecraft, and that cannot help a rescuer by adjusting its own attitude.
For the public, the story is simpler, and it is why Hubble captures attention in a way few other spacecraft do. This is the telescope that showed humanity galaxies from the early universe and the clouds of gas and dust where stars are born. The idea of letting it burn up, when a boost of a few hundred kilometers might give it decades more, is what makes the November 30 deadline feel urgent even though the re-entry itself is years away.
What Happens Next
The immediate next step is the November 30 deadline. Companies have until 3 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, November 30, 2026, to submit their responses to the Request for Information. NASA will then review what industry says it can do, what it would cost, and what help it would need from the agency.
After that, several paths are possible. If credible, affordable concepts emerge, NASA could move toward a formal competition and a funded mission, with a flight targeted by 2032. If a rescue proves too expensive, too risky, or technically out of reach, NASA could instead plan a controlled disposal when its science ends. If neither path is ready, the telescope will simply keep sinking, and the 2033 to 2034 re-entry forecast will stand.
For now, Hubble keeps observing, and its fate is, for the first time in years, an open question with a formal process behind it. NASA has asked the question in public, set a date for answers, and left the door open to saving one of science's greatest instruments — or to retiring it safely if that proves impossible.
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