The maintenance of something like this is very expensive… and it would be reasonable to replace it… which is even more expensive…
By the way, is Hubble the only telescope that was serviced in orbit…?
Anyway, it's a little ironic (maybe not the right word) that we put telescopes in orbit to get them above the atmosphere, but then they fall back to earth because of the wispy, outermost fringes of the atmosphere… it's very frustrating.
The maintenance of something like this is very expensive… and it would be reasonable to replace it… which is even more expensive…
By the way, is Hubble the only telescope that was serviced in orbit…?
Anyway, it's a little ironic (maybe not the right word) that we put telescopes in orbit to get them above the atmosphere, but then they fall back to earth because of the wispy, outermost fringes of the atmosphere… it's very frustrating.
It may be naïve, but wouldn’t another option be to turn one of the down pointing mirrors up?
I'm afraid none can be spared… they don't have enough of them… backyard astronomy is one thing, but backwards astronomy is really big…