re hst servicing mission in article apr lambda msfc nasa gov bday lambda msfc nasa gov brian day writes rdouglas stsci edu rob douglas writes but try to land a shuttle with that big huge telescope in the back and you could have problems the shuttle just isn t designed to land with that much weight in the payload is hst really that much heavier than a spacelab i hate to belabor the obvious once again but if there had been an orbiter emergency in the early stages of the original hst deployment mission they would have had to land with hst in the bay indeed they were worried about that one concern was the possibility that they would lose a motor or something on the way up and make orbit but one that was too low to give hst a useful lifetime against atmospheric drag i believe the decision was to deploy hst even if the projected lifetime was as short as six months in fact we got an excellent orbit on the upper envelope of what the shuttle can do i have never heard of any serious consideration that hst might be brought down for refurbishment you would have the horrendous cost of transporting cleaning re testing and re certifying all the hardware on the ground in addition to the lost observing time and the cost of a second deployment mission with the risks that we might not get such a good orbit the second time and you would probably still need a third servicing mission in a few years as gyros and other components wear out better to have two servicing missions in space which could well happen than to bring hst down and take it up again ben
