NASA signals a commercial Hubble servicing mission is back in play
From the Space digest for Oct 30, 2026
What happened: NASA has both posted a contract listing on SAM.gov, the federal procurement site, and issued a Request for Information asking industry about in-space servicing capabilities to support the Hubble Space Telescope — the agency's own move, reported in SpaceNews under the headline "NASA seeks ideas for Hubble servicing mission" and relayed with the NASA announcement by Jeff Foust. A NASASpaceflight relay carrying reporter Irene Klotz's headline put it earlier as "NASA reopens prospect of commercial Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission." It comes after a first-of-its-kind commercial rescue attempt on NASA's Swift telescope ended unsuccessfully this summer, a result that left the servicing question about Hubble explicitly open.
What's genuinely new: NASA now speaks on it directly — a Request for Information soliciting ideas and capabilities, sitting alongside the federal listing — turning a mission long treated as a maybe into an active solicitation. Neither the listing nor the request commits NASA to a flight, and no bidder, mission scope or funding figure appears in the available material.
Watch: which companies respond to the Request for Information, what it defines as the mission scope (a robotic boost versus something more ambitious), and whether NASA follows with funding.
Links: NASASpaceflight on X · SAM.gov · NASA · SpaceNews · Jeff Foust on X · Oct 30, 11:03 AM ET