NASA wants its future space telescopes designed to be serviceable, like Hubble
In a briefing at a recent science conference, a NASA official made it clear that it wants its proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) — presently undergoing its initial design studies for launch in the 2040s — be designed in a way that it can be maintained, repaired, and upgraded, much like the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA is planning for HWO to be serviceable, which means that they will need to figure out a way to work on, repair, and maintain the observatory while it operates roughly a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away. “HWO will have to be serviceable to some extent,” NASA’s astrophysics division director Shawn Domagal-Goldman told Space.com during a session at the American Astronomical Society’s (AAS) 248th meeting in Pasadena, California.
This design decision not only makes sense, NASA should have made it common practice a decade ago. The ability for robots to do this work is becoming increasingly robust, and in the next decade will become commonplace. For NASA to have launched anything in the past decade without this in mind was shameful.
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There is an excellent article on how engineering degrees were really meant to make more academics–not make anything
https://hackaday.com/2026/07/07/when-an-engineering-education-doesnt-teach-you-how-to-really-make-anything/
Schools have failed us even in areas free from propaganda.
Hubble was designed by those who wanted spysats–and the KH-11 HAD to work.
One of the biggest mistakes in engineering education was the decision for departments to hire their faculty directly out of school.
When I was an undergraduate in mechanical 50 years ago, most of my professors had either spent time in industry or worked closely with it. Nowadays, having actual industrial experience by having been in the field, or worked in a design office or on a shop floor seems to reduce one’s chances of getting a faculty position.
One thing I learned while I was in industry was that there’s only so much one can learn from computer simulations or doodling on paper. Eventually, one will have to cut metal or melt some solder, build something, and see what happens. That’s one reason why SpaceX has been so successful because it produces and tests its machinery.
” . . . one will have to cut metal or melt some solder, build something, and see what happens.”
That’s most of why I went into Engineering (mech). It is a lot of fun turning ‘doodles on paper’ into something tangible. More fun if it works. Most of my proff’s had industry experience; my Electrical proff helped develop JPEG.
Sadly, this is an economics problem, one I believe we’ve learned the wrong lesson from. If it is cheaper to repair, repair. If it is cheaper to remove and replace, remove and replace. There are those who would posit that the repariability of Hubble kept NASA from launching 8-10 equally capable replacements for less $$$ than the multiple repair / servicing missions. Of course, R&R is a necessary skill for long term presence in space. Too bad we weren’t invited to the debate. Cheers –
1 was taught in Command and General Staff College that Option 1 is always to do nothing / do not change what you are currently doing. Of course that just formally expressed part of a decision tree we’ve been doing all our lives, but it’s always an option to consider in making a decision..
So whether or not to repair something in space should always begin from no and what replacements might be implemented from there and if yes, the various ways that might be implemented
Compare and contrast and decide on a best option
There is an Andy Capp cartoon where Mr. Capp muses “If you don’t make a decision; you’ve made a decision.”
For each mission I suspect they looked at the budget, said “This is less than putting a new one up” and sold it to Congress that way.
It employed Shuttle, instead of moving to something actually reusable. So the cost of the missions was high, but they can fiddle with those.
Considering it was originally over budget and time anyway, I think repair missions might have been easier to sell. The replacements were no more likely to be on time and budget after all.
No doubt the jobs and supplies involved in the repair missions were also easier to keep in the appropriate politicians’ districts.
Good point. With the hideously long lead times, things that were economically viable when they started (1977 for Hubble), become much less so when they are launched (1990 for Hubble). Shuttle was designed for 60 flights/year. It maxed out at 9.
Lots of interesting decisions / stories over the years that went in the bad economic direction, starting refusal to consider Chysler’s SERV (an onion-shaped reusable) for the Shuttle configuration in 1971. Reason? No wings.
NASA slow rolled Klaus Heiss proposal to purchase a 5th orbiter privately in 1982 until funding went away.
Early rumors about Hubble was that it was repurposed NRO equipment. If there was one, there were likely others. Given what we’ve learned over the last half century, the rumors were probably just that. OTOH, at the time, there was reluctance to allow about photographs of Hubble’s shipping container when it was delivered to the Cape because of similarity to containers for NRO equipment.
Last, but certainly not least was the decision to develop SLS rather than go with a Shuttle C that most certainly would have cost much less than $4b/flight, been more reusable than SLS, and could have incrementally grown over time.
Make enough wrong choices over the years, and eventually you choose yourself out of business. Cheers –
agimarc wrote: “There are those who would posit that the repariability of Hubble kept NASA from launching 8-10 equally capable replacements for less $$$ than the multiple repair / servicing missions.”
Considering that the most of the funding for the servicing missions came from the manned space budget and the replacements and repair kits were relatively inexpensive on the astronomy budget — certainly less expensive than grinding new mirrors and the cost of the 8-10 flights that would be needed to place those additional telescopes into orbit — I think that those who would posit that thought would not be as as correct as they would think they were.
As I noted in The Universe in a Mirror, opposition to spending any money on manned space flight vanished within the astronomy committee as Hubble’s history unfolded. Not only was manned space keeping Hubble operating and upgraded in ways that had been impossible before, the linkage between space astronomy, manned space, and Hubble’s discoveries fueled a big public interest in astronomy, which in turn funded slew of new space telescopes. The two decades after Hubble saw more space telescopes launched than at any other time.