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.
Many telescopes (also the Roman Telescope) are going further out to the L2 point about a million miles from Earth these days. Servicing them is impossible at the moment, but at least the atmosphere won't get them...
As far as I know, Hubble was the only one (though I'd love to hear otherwise). Some satellites have been serviced, though, Intelsat 603 was one example - astronauts fitted a new motor to it so it was able to raise its orbit. There have been one or two recent cases of robotic servicing of satellites too.
Spy satellites are equipped with instruments to observe the Earth, and they can't always be used to look at the stars instead. This is partly the problem with the "free" mirror NASA got - they still need to build and test the scientific instruments they would put on the telescope.
But, also, I suspect the spy agencies would not be keen on revealing the kinds of capability they have in orbit. Even Hubble was based on designs at least a decade old.
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.
Many telescopes (also the Roman Telescope) are going further out to the L2 point about a million miles from Earth these days. Servicing them is impossible at the moment, but at least the atmosphere won't get them...
As far as I know, Hubble was the only one (though I'd love to hear otherwise). Some satellites have been serviced, though, Intelsat 603 was one example - astronauts fitted a new motor to it so it was able to raise its orbit. There have been one or two recent cases of robotic servicing of satellites too.
It may be naïve, but wouldn’t another option be to turn one of the down pointing mirrors up?
Spy satellites are equipped with instruments to observe the Earth, and they can't always be used to look at the stars instead. This is partly the problem with the "free" mirror NASA got - they still need to build and test the scientific instruments they would put on the telescope.
But, also, I suspect the spy agencies would not be keen on revealing the kinds of capability they have in orbit. Even Hubble was based on designs at least a decade old.
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…