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Hubble Space Telescope Will Last Through the Mid-2020s, Report Says (space.com)
schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Despite recent issues with one of its instruments, the Hubble Space Telescope is expected to last at least another five years. A new report suggests that the iconic spacecraft has a strong chance of enduring through the mid-2020s. [...] One reason the spacecraft has lasted so long is that astronauts have provided aid. Servicing missions continued to update the telescope until 2009, when the space shuttle was retired. The final update to Hubble included the installation of two brand-new instruments, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and WFC3. The astronauts on Servicing Mission 4 also performed on-site repairs for the telescope's two other instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), both of which had stopped working. The astronauts additionally replaced Hubble's 18-year-old batteries with new ones; installed six new gyroscopes, whose job is turning the telescope; and added a brand-new Fine Guidance System to point the instrument. Astronauts also covered Hubble's equipment bays with insulating panels and installed a device that will help to guide the observatory down when its mission comes to an end.
the Hubble got launched, fixed and repaired and updated and serviced because the US had the Space Shuttle to carry a crew, equipment, parts, space walkers, support, the Canada arm, manoeuvring fuel, a toilet and shower up to the Hubble's high orbit. They don't have a Shuttle any more.
The US plans for a return to manned spaceflight involves 1960s-style "spam in a can" up-around-and-down flights to nowhere, with none of the useful luxuries the Shuttle had, especially the ability to support spacewalks.
will be to land on Trump like that house in The Wizard of Oz, so we won't have to endure another 4 years of his idiocy.