Yes nothing lasts for every of course and with the cost of space still being
pretty high, there are limits to what you can, and maybe should do on the
costs versus returns side. With the adaptive optics on many ground based
telescopes these days the gap between Hubble and ground based systems has
narrowed considerably
As for Web, is this not a very expensive project, with lots of things as
yet untested in space that will have a very finite life span.
Brian

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From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
"David Spain" wrote in message
...
On Thursday, February 5, 2015 at 12:13:42 PM UTC-5, JF Mezei wrote:
I never got around to knowing exactly what they did to Hubble during the
last Shuttle maintenance trip to it.


You can find some answers at Wikipedia he

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125

If you head over to NASA's website and search STS-125 you can probably find
all the answers you are looking for.

What are the plans for a safe de-orbit for Hubble ? Dod it have some
sort of grapple device ? Or is it more likely they would contract with
SpaceX for a bared Dragon that would harpoon Hubble and then de-orbit
with it in tow ?

How much longer is Hubble expected to remain in operation ?

Since when it was being serviced it was being held via the Canada-arm in the
Space Shuttle payload bay, yes, there is a grappling pin on the side of the
vehicle.

Likely to contract SpaceX to de-orbit? Probably not likely.

Originally planned to be operational until the end of last year, 2014. My
take on this is that, as long as it's functional, it will continue to be
used until Webb is brought on-line. Then it will become a question of
whether Congress is willing to fund TWO space telescope operations, or hand
Hubble off to an NGO or multinational consortium or abandon it in place. The
latter is sure to happen if it malfunctions so severely as to become
inoperable.

Dave