Servicing Space Telescopes, and satellites, is key to their productive lives.

Scientists and engineers push for servicing and assembly of future space observatories - SpaceNews.com

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. - A group of astronomers and engineers is seeking to convince NASA to study in-space servicing and assembly of future space telescopes, including the role the proposed Deep Space Gateway could play to support it.

 From article, (A group of astronomers and engineers is seeking to convince NASA to study in-space servicing and assembly of future space telescopes, including the role the proposed Deep Space Gateway could play to support it.

During a panel discussion at the 231st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society here, members of an ad-hoc group formed last year to study the topic argued that servicing and assembly techniques, involving astronauts or robots, could enable both servicing of telescopes to extend their lives as well as assemble future observatories too large to launch in a single piece.

NASA has taken very different approaches to servicing for its flagship space telescopes. At one extreme is the Hubble Space Telescope, which was repaired and upgraded on five shuttle servicing missions between 1993 and 2009, allowing the telescope to overcome initial problems and improve its performance.

“When Hubble was launched in 1990, it was not a very good telescope,” said John Grunsfeld, a former astronaut who flew on three of those shuttle servicing missions and later served as the agency’s associate administrator for science. “Had it not been serviceable, we would have long ago abandoned it.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is at the other extreme, with no capability for servicing. Once launched, the spacecraft will go through a complex sequence to unfold its mirror and deploy a large sunshield, all without the ability for an astronaut or a robotic spacecraft to fix anything should that deployment go awry.

“Once we launch it, James Webb will start, on its own, doing all of these deployments by commands,” he said. “No one is up there to give it a little shake if anything sticks.”)

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