NASA Could Install a Grappling Hook on the James Webb Space Telescope

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a planned space infrared observatory, intended to be a significant improvement on the aging Hubble Space Telescope, which is about to be decommissioned, after successfully serving its purpose since 1990.
The agency is considering equipping the telescope with a grappler, similar to the iron shaft with claws at one end, used by pirates for drawing and holding an enemy ship alongside, to allow future manned or robotic interventions in case of malfunctions.

"We are currently studying the possibility of adding a lightweight grapple fixture to JWST," said John Decker, Deputy Associate Director of the JWST Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "A grapple fixture is a kind of a grab bar that would afford a means for a future manned or robotic servicing capability to safely attach to the telescope in space."

For the moment, it's mostly a feasibility study designed to evaluate how valuable such a grappling hook would be emergency servicing operations on the Webb telescope if such a need were to arise.

The assessment will finalize in 2008, when NASA will take a final decision as to whether the grapple feature will be added to the telescope.

Constructed and operated by NASA with assistance from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the telescope's launch is planned for no earlier than June 2013, and it will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket.

When deployed, it will be orbiting the second Lagrange point (L2) of the Sun-Earth system, located at 1.5 million kilometers (approximately 930,000 miles) from Earth, outside the orbit of the Moon, a gravitational saddle point where the satellite will maintain a relatively stable position around the Earth.

From this location, JWST is expected to take a look back more than 13 billion years in time to understand the formation of galaxies, stars and planets and the evolution of our own solar system.