When will Hubble fall to Earth? The 2033 odds, and a rescue bid

The short answer is probably 2033 or 2034, but the exact date is a moving target. Forecasts of when a satellite comes down depend heavily on the Sun. When solar activity is high, the upper atmosphere puffs up, drag gets stronger and orbits sink faster.

NASA has put rough odds on it. There is about a 10% chance Hubble reenters by September 2032, and that rises to 50% by December 2033. So a coin flip says Hubble is gone by the end of 2033, and the chances keep climbing after that.

• Most likely reentry: 2033 to 2034, per NASA analysis
• Chance by September 2032: about 10%
• Chance by December 2033: about 50%
• Deadline for any rescue flight: 2032

That last line matters most. NASA says a boost or servicing mission would need to happen by 2032, before the orbit gets too low and the telescope becomes much harder to catch.

Hubble is falling because it has no engine. Every spacecraft in low Earth orbit brushes against thin traces of atmosphere, and that drag slowly steals speed and height. The International Space Station fights this with regular engine burns. Hubble can’t.

For most of its life, the space shuttle did the lifting. Astronauts visited Hubble five times to repair it, swap instruments and keep it sharp. The last orbit raise came in 2002, when the shuttle Columbia pushed it to about 583 km (362 miles). The final visit, in 2009, did not raise the orbit, and the shuttles retired soon after.

Since then Hubble has simply coasted downhill. It took 24 years to drift from that 2002 height to about 470 km (292 miles), where it flies now. The lower it gets, the thicker the air and the faster the fall, which is why the last few years before reentry tend to go quickly.

NASA’s request for information covers three possible jobs, and a company can pitch any of them:

• A reboost: catch Hubble and lift it to at least 600 km (373 miles).
• A servicing visit: improve the telescope while someone is up there.
• A safe ending: steer Hubble into a controlled reentry, or park it in a disposal orbit.

The rules are strict. Whoever does it must not damage Hubble, and the company has to bring everything itself: the rocket, the servicing spacecraft, mission control and, if the plan uses astronauts, the crew. A boost to 600 km would likely keep Hubble flying for at least another 25 years.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed it as a value question, saying the agency owes it to taxpayers and scientists to look for cheap ways to stretch out the life of hardware already in orbit. Nicky Fox, who runs NASA’s science missions, said commercial companies have quickly built new tools for grabbing and servicing satellites.

There is a catch. This is only a request for information, not a contract. NASA has not committed to buying a mission and has no money set aside for one. It wants to know who is interested, what they could do and what it would cost.

Yes, almost exactly. In 2022 Isaacman, then a private astronaut and not yet NASA’s boss, offered to pay for most of a crewed Hubble visit using a SpaceX Dragon capsule. NASA asked industry for ideas that same year and got eight responses. In 2024 it decided not to go ahead with a reboost.

A crewed trip looks less likely this time. Crew Dragon is due to be retired by SpaceX by 2030, and Boeing has already been picked by NASA for extra astronaut flights. Isaacman expects robotics companies to show interest instead, and startups are already raising money for hardware that can refuel and repair satellites in orbit.

One detail helps any robot. On the final shuttle visit in 2009, astronauts fitted Hubble with a soft-capture mechanism, a docking fixture meant to make it easier for a future spacecraft to latch on.

A warning from a smaller telescope

If you want to see how this could go wrong, look at NASA’s Swift observatory. Its science work ended on October 20 after it sank so low, under 275 km, that drag made steady pointing impossible.

NASA had hired a startup, Katalyst Space, to grab Swift and lift it higher. The company’s robotic spacecraft ran into trouble and never reached the telescope. Swift is now expected to come down within days, with most of it burning up, though a few dense parts could survive.

Swift is much smaller than Hubble, and its rescue had a far tighter deadline. Still, it shows that catching an old, engine-less telescope in orbit is hard, and the first attempt by a commercial robot did not work.

The risk to any one person is tiny, but it isn’t zero. Because the telescope is so massive, letting it tumble in on its own would put people below at a small but real risk, since some sturdy parts may not burn up completely.

That is exactly why NASA lists controlled disposal as one of its three options. A guided reentry would aim any debris at a remote patch of ocean instead of leaving it to chance. Even if Hubble is never boosted, a company might still be hired to bring it down safely.

For everyday people, Hubble is the source of many of the space images on posters, phone wallpapers and science lessons. It has made more than 1.7 million observations since 1990, and over 23,000 peer-reviewed papers are based on its work.

The newer James Webb Space Telescope mostly sees infrared light. Hubble’s strength is visible and ultraviolet light, and astronomers don’t expect a true replacement before NASA’s planned Habitable Worlds Observatory in the 2040s. Losing Hubble in 2033 would leave a gap of a decade or more.

The next date to watch is November 30, when industry replies are due. After that, NASA will have to decide whether any pitch is cheap and safe enough to fund, and it would need to move fast to fly by 2032.