Hubble Is Sinking Faster in a Busy Solar Cycle; NASA Wants a Catch by 2032
NASA asked industry on Oct. 29 whether anyone can capture Hubble and boost it to at least 600 km by 2032. Its own lifetime analysis gives a 10% chance of reentry by September 2032, and the descent has sped up since 2022.
One piece of Hubble's hardware has spent more than 17 years waiting for a visitor. It is a soft-capture mechanism, fitted during STS-125, the last shuttle servicing flight, which launched on May 11, 2009. Wikipedia says the system was installed to "enable the future rendezvous, capture, and safe disposal of Hubble by either a crewed or robotic mission."
On Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, NASA asked industry whether anyone can capture Hubble, the job that hardware was added to make easier. Goddard Space Flight Center posted a Request for Information, solicitation 80GSFC27RFIHSTS, on SAM.gov, and NASA's announcement followed on Friday, Oct. 30. The agency wants to know whether a company can capture Hubble and boost it to at least 600 km, service it, or bring it down in a controlled reentry. The notice says any boost or servicing mission "is expected to occur by 2032." Replies are due at 3 p.m. Eastern on Monday, Nov. 30.
The notice opens with "THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL," and the government will not pay for the replies. The notice commits NASA to nothing.
The deadline comes from NASA's own lifetime analysis, run in July 2026 and quoted in the notice: a 10% probability of reentry by September 2032 and 50% by December 2033. By Daybreak Wire's arithmetic, that is a one-in-ten risk about 5.9 years from today and a coin flip about 7.2 years out. NASA's announcement words it differently, saying Hubble is "likely to re-enter the atmosphere in the 2033 to 2034 timeframe." Both lines are NASA's, and they are not quite the same statement.
Other dates float around. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) reported a median reentry of "mid-2033" and less than a 10% chance before 2030, in a report published Feb. 5, 2026. On Feb. 25, 2026, The Register reported that astronomer Jonathan McDowell, plotting Hubble's altitude, saw reentry "as early as 2028." That is the worst case on the table.
Treat these as relatives, not independent witnesses. Each depends on how active the Sun turns out to be, which nobody can forecast years ahead. Forecasts have already moved once: in June 2024, NASA's Mark Clampin gave "the mid-2030s" as the earliest reentry, and today's 10% mark sits in September 2032. They can move again.
Daybreak Wire's read is that Hubble's problem is the Sun and the clock more than the telescope. STScI put the odds above 90% that enough pointing hardware (guidance sensors, a gyro and reaction wheels) will still work in 2030. That says nothing about 2033, when NASA puts the reentry odds at 50%.
The drag comes from the Sun's side of the ledger
Hubble has no engine. NASA says so plainly: "Hubble does not have a propulsion system to maintain its own orbit." So, like every low-orbit object, it slowly sinks as drag drains its orbital energy.
The air is almost nothing, but not nothing. At about 470 km, Hubble moves at roughly 7.6 km/s and circles Earth every 94 minutes or so, which means it plows through that thin gas more than 15 times a day. (The International Space Station gets pushed back up. Hubble cannot.)
How much gas it meets depends on the thermosphere, the layer that West Virginia University engineer Piyush Mehta describes as running from about 50 miles (80 km) to roughly 600 miles (1,000 km) up. When magnetic storms dump energy into it, he wrote in The Conversation in 2022, the atmosphere heats up and expands upward. "Higher density means more drag, which can be a problem for satellites."
The mechanism has a casualty list: in February 2022, NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio says, a geomagnetic storm heated the atmosphere and 38 commercial satellites were lost. And on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024, NASA and NOAA announced that "The Sun is officially in solar maximum of Solar Cycle 25."
The Register links Hubble's quicker recent descent to that activity, saying it is "at least partly due to increased solar activity." The hedge is fair; no source isolates the Sun from everything else.
The arithmetic is where it gets striking. TechCrunch reported in September 2022 that Hubble had dropped from around 565 km to just under 535 km since 2009. That is about 30 km in about 13.4 years, or roughly 2.2 km a year. From that point to today, about 65 km in about 4.1 years works out to roughly 16 km a year, around seven times faster.
Two cautions. These come from rounded published figures, and the 2022 point is "just under 535," so read the ratio as about seven, not exactly seven. And drag grows as an orbit sinks, so a lower Hubble meets thicker air even if the Sun calms.
Three options hang on one soft-capture mechanism
| Option in the RFI | What NASA asks for | What bidders must state | What the sources do not say |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reboost | "capturing the HST in low earth orbit and boosting it to at least 600 km" | Amount of boost, and the lowest altitude at which the service can still be done | Cost, vehicle, or whether a capture can be done without harm; Ars estimates at least 25 more years at 600 km |
| Servicing | "enhance its ongoing performance and increase its resilience and expected on-orbit lifetime" | Time docked, control of the combined stack, risk to Hubble | Which parts or instruments would be worked on |
| Controlled reentry | "perform a controlled reentry disposal" | The same response list applies, including risk to Hubble | Where Hubble would come down; NPR reports NASA has long considered steering it into an ocean |
Most approaches begin the same way, with a vehicle that has to find Hubble, match its orbit and take hold. The notice asks bidders for "launch, rendezvous with and capture of HST," the length of time docked, how the combined stack would be controlled, and "the maximum HST body rates that can be accommodated during capture." In plain terms, how fast can the telescope be turning when a vehicle grabs it?
The soft-capture mechanism from 2009 is the reason this is thinkable. The Register says it means "docking with the spacecraft will be easier than the grappling planned for Swift." No source says how much easier.
Then there is the push. Hubble sits at about 470 km and NASA wants at least 600 km, a lift of about 130 km. In 2022, TechCrunch reported that Hubble project manager Patrick Crouse said a boost of 40 to 70 kilometers could add 15 or even 20 years to Hubble's operational life. Ars estimates at least 25 more years from 600 km, an Ars figure, not NASA's.
One piece of analysis, labelled as Daybreak Wire's own: a vehicle that can hold Hubble firmly enough to slow it for a controlled reentry can, in principle, hold it firmly enough to speed it up. Reboost and disposal are mirror images of one capture. The notice also asks vendors for "the minimum altitude of HST that the service can be performed to achieve a boost to at least 600 km."
The notice's one stated limit is that the mission "must not harm the HST." There is only one Hubble, and the contractor would be expected to supply "the launch vehicle, spacecraft, crew if applicable, and servicing vehicle mission operations."
The precedent is not encouraging. NASA announced its Katalyst contract on Sept. 24, 2025, to meet, grab and lift the Swift observatory. The vehicle launched on July 3, 2026, 282 days later, and NASA called off the rescue on Aug. 19. The failed Swift rescue ended when the vehicle re-entered on Sept. 25, 2026 without capturing the observatory. Swift was not designed to be reboosted; Hubble was designed to be visited.
NASA said no in 2024 and now has less time
NASA has done this dance before. On Sept. 22, 2022, it signed an unfunded agreement with SpaceX to study a Dragon boost; the 2022 SpaceX study came with the line "There are no plans for NASA to conduct or fund a servicing mission or compete this opportunity".
On Dec. 22, 2022, NASA issued an earlier RFI that stayed open until Jan. 24, 2023. The Space Review reports it drew eight responses. Then came June 4, 2024, and NPR reported the answer:
"after exploring the current commercial capabilities, we are not going to pursue a reboost right now."
Mark Clampin, then director of NASA's astrophysics division, June 4, 2024
NASA's assessment raised "premature loss of science" if Hubble were accidentally damaged. Clampin added that NASA's latest prediction put the earliest reentry in the mid-2030s, so "we are not going to be seeing it come down in the next couple of years."
Now compare Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator for science, on Oct. 30, 2026: "Given the time we have until Hubble's anticipated re-entry, we are eager to explore the breadth of possibilities to boost Hubble to a higher orbit while we develop the flagship mission to follow." The notice arrives 28 months after the no.
Some things have changed. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, whom the Register says advocated a SpaceX boost that was ultimately rejected, now runs the agency. And Swift has been tried and failed. No source says any of this is why NASA asked again.
What nobody has said is as telling. The Register notes "There is no indication of how much the agency expects to pay." Bidders must send "an estimate of cost, payment schedule, and assumptions about your access to government facilities," so NASA is asking for the price rather than offering one. STScI's roadmap says a boost "would require planning and funding to start in FY27," and that is the federal fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2026.
The motive is on the page. Hubble is "in high demand (over 7:1 oversubscription)," with 1000+ scientific papers a year, and "no replacement expected before ~2040." If it falls first, uncontrolled, NPR reported that large components would survive, and The Register says someone on the ground could "have a very bad day," though the chance is remote. Because Hubble's orbit is inclined 28.47 degrees to the equator, any debris would land within roughly 28.5 degrees of it, north or south. That bound is Daybreak Wire's inference from the orbit.
Hubble is NORAD catalog number 20580 (designator 1990-037B), and satellite-tracking sites publish its altitude. NASA is seeking responses from interested vendors.
The RFI asks bidders for "the minimum altitude of HST that the service can be performed to achieve a boost to at least 600 km." Hubble is already answering the question, sinking roughly 28 meters a day on today's orbital elements (a snapshot, not a forecast, by Daybreak Wire's arithmetic), and the notice does not say what altitude is too low.
