NASA and SpaceX last week agreed to an unfunded study to investigate the feasibility of boosting the Hubble Space Telescope, which is at risk of falling out of orbit in the next decade, into a higher orbit. .

SpaceX approached NASA earlier this year about potentially using one of its Dragon spacecrafts to move the telescope to a higher altitude, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said in a press conference Thursday. .

Despite signing the Space Act Agreement with SpaceX for the six-month project on Sept.

NASA HUBBLE TELESCOPE HITS NEW MILESTONE IN MYSTERY OF UNIVERSE'S EXPANSION RATE 

Moving the telescope to a higher orbit could give Hubble more years of operability, NASA said. 

BOCA CHICA, TX - FEBRUARY 11: The Crew of the next SpaceX private astronaut flight called Polaris Dawn, (Left to Right) Anna Menon, who works to develop astronaut operations for SpaceX, Sarah Gillis, lead space operations engineer, SpaceX, Scott Poteet, who served as the mission director of the Inspiration4 mission SpaceX, and Jared Isaacman, who is financing the mission, Pose at the Starbase Complex in Boca Chica. 

Any potential mission would be a collaboration between SpaceX and billionaire Jared Isaacman’s Polaris Program, a planned series of spaceflights with SpaceX, one of which Isaacman has said would include the first civilian spacewalk

Over the years, the Hubble telescope has taken spectacular images and videos of the cosmos, including the discovery of moons around Pluto.