This past week, the American Astronomical Society’s annual Goddard Space Symposium was held. Typically, it has had many different panels, and this year was no different.

During one of the panels on the second day, Jared Rieckewald, Senior Director of SpaceLogistics, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, mentioned that they are working on an unsolicited proposal to service the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. This space telescope is one of only a handful of operational X-ray space telescopes, and it will mark 23 years in space this July.

The current servicing spacecraft that Northrop Grumman operates is called the Mission Extension Vehicle. Essentially, it is a standard satellite bus with extra fuel and a grabber on the front end to take hold of a customer satellite and move it into a different orbit or maintain its current orbit. The satellites that the MEV has worked with to date have been in geostationary orbit, 35,789 kilometers above the Earth. Chandra, however, is in an orbit a third of the way to the Moon or almost four times farther away than the geostationary satellites. It will need a much larger rocket such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, if not something more powerful, to reach Chandra.

It is not clear that Chandra even needs a servicing mission at this point. And there’s the risk of propellant residue from the MEV inadvertently damaging the sensitive optics of the telescope, so the question is would these risks be worth it for a space telescope that is mostly functioning normally? Still, it would be an exciting mission, if for no other reason than to be able to assess how Chandra is holding up after more than two decades in high orbit.

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Irene Klotz thread (Twitter)