At a last-minute press conference, a billionaire space tourist and NASA and SpaceX officials announced plans — albeit tentative and cautious — to launch a private mission to serve the Hubble Space Telescope.
billionaire Jared Isaacman, the founder of the Polaris Project, is very cautious about this. Together with NASA and SpaceX officials, his speech was limited to announcing a study on whether such a mission could be feasible. However, the ambition to serve aging telescopes is obvious.
"With the James Webb Telescope going online, the Hubble mission became even more important," Isaacman said. "So, it's absolutely exciting to think of the possibility of extending the lifespan and ability of one of our greatest explorers."
Hubble is really looking old. Last year, its computer system encountered a serious problem, with NASA officials biting their thumbs-up before finding a solution. Isaacman also did receive extraordinary honors, and he visited orbit last year as part of the Inspiration 4 mission, in which he and three team members spent a few days of space vacation in SpaceX's Crew Dragon cabin.
That being said, Isaacman made a fortune in the online payment industry. Of course, he won a place in history books by placing sports bets from space for the first time during his space trip last year, but he was neither a SpaceX official nor an engineer, scientist or a professional astronaut. For someone who lacks these honors, repairing NASA's old equipment is a rather strange ambition.
But maybe that's why the billionaire turned his eyes to Hubble - it could be a legitimate way to keep him away from his reputation as a space tourist, making him and his Polaris more comparable to SpaceX's Elon Musk (Elon Musk ) than to Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos (Jeff Bezos 2).
Isaacman added: "In addition to NASA, exploration is one of the many goals of the commercial space industry, and the Hubble Space Telescope is probably one of the greatest exploration assets ever."
Isaacman concisely defends his potential mission when reporters asked about his qualifications.
He said: "I'm very happy to be on the field."
NASA and SpaceX both maintain a relatively shy attitude, emphasizing that public-private cooperation is crucial to achieving the goal of a multi-planet humanity future. Although Isaacman works with SpaceX and is clearly eager to make a makeover for Hubble, NASA seems to be equally keen to hand over the task to a commercial enterprise.
"This is a ready-made idea," said Thomas Zurbuchen, deputy director of NASA's Science Mission Council.
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