Salvage rights

> Hey, now that NASA has decided to abandon the Hubble telescope,
does that
> make it fair game for the first guys to get up there and grab it?
I mean, even
> after 15 years of depreciation, it's still gotta be worth half a
billion, at
> least. Seems like a great opportunity for somebody...

As long as Hubble is still functional, nobody else but NASA can
legally touch it. However, it is down to 3 operational gyroscopes
out of six, so once two more fail it becomes junk. Space junk falls
under the laws of salvage; if you can acquire it, then it is yours.

There is a lot more junk up there, some of it orbiting for decades
already, from dead GEO satellites to spent Apollo stages. Notice
the competition between various space agencies and private industry
to salvage this stuff? None.

Ed