A private company has an audacious plan to rescue NASA’s last “Great Observatory”

[smp]

From Ars Technica:
"... A small space technology company, Rhea Space Activity, says it has a plan to resurrect Spitzer. Last week the firm said it won a $250,000 grant from the US Space Force to continue studying a robotic rescue mission for the spacecraft, which is now about two astronomical units—or twice the distance of Earth from the Sun—away. ..."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05 ... servatory/

Wow. Ambitious. Good luck!

smp

[helicon]

Good stuff Stephen.

[SkyHiker]

Why not launch a Spitzer copy instead and have the certainty that it will work? The rocket launch alone is about 100-200M. Spitzer is a small and lightweight observatory of about 950 kg, probably not much more than a robot would weigh. Making a Spitzer copy will cost a bit of money, but the research was already done. For a robot you will have more costs for follow-up projects, simulation, building and testing a new device. Sounds like a waste of money to me.

[seigell]

Why not launch a Spitzer copy instead and have the certainty that it will work?

When was the last time we sent "just a copy" of anything that wasn't already designed to be part of a satellite "Constellation"??
And even for ones like the GPS constellation, there were constant in-series upgrades.

That being said, the Launched Cost of Spitzer was $776M in 2003 Dollars (about $128B today). The Total Cost Estimate for the "Spitzer Resurrector" mission would be $350M (per ArsTechnica).
That is a bit of a Price Differential. But, what do we get for that $900M savings?? The Article only describes Rendezvous and Visual Inspection and "Unsafing" the Flight Controls. No mention of the all-important Liquid Helium reload that would allow anything but a "Hot Spitzer" Phase 2 operation.

[seigell]

What interested me most in the ArsTechnica article was:

Billionaire Jared Issacman is working with SpaceX and NASA to use a Crew Dragon vehicle to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope.

I wonder if they could boost Hubble to a higher orbit. Or will Crew Dragon bring similar restrictions to the Shuttle??

[messier 111]

thx .