Oct 3, 2022 2:00 PM EDT SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour as it approached the International Space Station in 2021. NASA Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Email address Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The Hubble Space Telescope has sent back dazzling images and critical data back to Earth for 32 years, but nothing lasts forever, even space telescopes. In an effort to give the telescope a longer lifespan, NASA and SpaceX signed an unfunded Space Act Agreement. They will be studying the feasibility of a SpaceX and Polaris Program idea to use SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to boost the Hubble into a higher orbit at no cost to the government. The study is designed to help NASA understand the commercial possibilities of missions like this, but there currently aren’t any plans for NASA to conduct or fund a servicing mission to the telescope or commercially compete in this space, according to NASA. In partnership with the Polaris Program (a planned human space flight company), SpaceX proposed this study as a way to better understand the technical challenges associated with servicing missions in space. The Polaris Program is funded by billionaire Jason Isaacman, who bought three flights to space on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft earlier this year. SpaceX was founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk with the goal of reducing the costs of space exploration and one day colonize Mars. In 2020, Dragon became the first private spacecraft to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.