Leaf Fan opined

Unfortunately many things changed after February 1. Even the official
position of the astronaut office at JSC is that astronaut lives will not
be risked for an HST retrieval mission, i.e. the benefit of returning
HST to Earth is not worth the risko of astronaut lives. The risk is
acceptable for servicing missions where the benefit is scientific knowledge.

The HST Program did a study to determine what would have to be done to
bring HST back to in the payload bay and while the study assumed
Columbia, i.e. no external airlock, a return mission could be performed
with an orbiter that has the external airlock, although additional work
would have to be done (servicing hardware mods for HST to fit farther
back in the bay).

The current thinking is that some sort of propulsion module will be
attached to HST to provide a controlled re-entry at the end of HST's life.

If NASA is going to delibrately change Hubbles orbit, why not do 2 burns and
boost into a 6,000km orbit and give some future generation the option of
retrieving it for the Smithsonian?

-ash
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