NASA Moves to Rescue Hubble

NASA PHOTO NASA has announced that it will begin serious development of a 2007 robotic mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. A planned servicing mission by the space shuttle was canceled in January, but an outcry of support for the telescope forced the agency to reassess its options. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe reportedly said last week that he expects the mission to cost from about $1 billion to $1.6 billion--money that the agency will ask Congress to supply. As Hubble's fate appears to be looking up, it is beginning to show its age--one of its four scientific instruments failed earlier this month. The Space Imaging Spectrograph shut down after what the agency's engineers believe to be a problem with the device's power supply. The spectrograph was installed during a servicing mission in 1997 with an anticipated five-year operating life. It suffered a similar power failure in 2001 and had been using a backup system since then. The spectroscope accounts for 30% of the Hubble scientific observation program time--time that NASA will now fill with programs that use the remaining three instruments. NASA is evaluating ways to recover use of the spectrograph and has set up a review board to investigate what caused the instrument to suspend its function.