NASA and SpaceX have agreed to study the feasibility of awarding Elon Musk's company a contract to boost the Hubble Space Telescope to a higher orbit, with a goal of extending its lifespan, the US space agency said Thursday.

The renowned observatory has been operating since 1990 about 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth, in an orbit that slowly decays over time.

Hubble has no on-board propulsion to counter the small but still present atmospheric drag in this region of space, and its altitude has previously been restored during Space Shuttle missions.

The proposed new effort would involve a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

"A few months ago, SpaceX approached NASA with the idea for a study whether a commercial crew could help reboost our Hubble spacecraft," NASA's chief scientist Thomas Zurbuchen told reporters, adding the agency had agreed to the study at no cost to itself.

CU Boulder geologist Lisa Mayhew is among the scientists working to recreate the history of an ancient landscape that wouldn't look out of place in Utah—only this terrain sits on Mars millions of miles from Earth.

Mayhew is a member of the science team for NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which is led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California. In August, she and her colleagues published some of the first sets of results from the Perseverance rover's exploration of the Red Planet.

The findings take a deep look at Jezero Crater. More than 3 billion years ago, a large asteroid struck Mars, forming this geologic feature that stretches almost 30 miles across and contains rolling sand dunes and craggy cliffs. Using a suite of scientific instruments aboard the Perseverance rover, which is about the size of an SUV, the researchers have begun to explore that landscape's past—showing how igneous rock forms the crater floor and how water reshaped the rocks during a time when a vast lake likely filled this region.