WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US shuttle mission to repair the Hubble space telescope this year could be delayed due to the postponement of last month's Atlantis launch, a NASA official said Tuesday.
Astronauts on Atlantis are scheduled to repair and modernize Hubble in August. But technical glitches that have delayed the shuttle's current mission since early December may also put the August operation on hold, associate administrator Alan Stern told reporters.
"That's dependent upon the shuttle flights between now and the servicing mission" for Hubble, he said in a telephone conference. "Our watchword is safety."
The National Space and Aeronautics Administration (NASA) called off last month's launch, on a mission to the International Space Station, after finding faults with fuel gauges on Atlantis's fuel tank.
NASA says it has tracked the cause of the faults to an electrical circuit unit, and plans to launch the space station mission some time after January 24, probably in February.
After this mission to deliver the Columbus European space laboratory to the orbiting station, NASA must then carry out two more shuttle launches, originally slated for February and April, to install separate elements of Kibo, a Japanese lab.
The agency aims to complete the construction of the orbiting station, planned as a jumping-off point for deeper space exploration, by 2010, when it is due to take its three shuttles out of service.
Hubble revolutionized astronomy when it was launched in 1990 as the first orbiting space telescope, but some of its devices have since failed, reducing its capabilities.
NASA plans to install new batteries, a wide-angle camera and other technology to sharpen Hubble's gaze into the universe and extend its working life by up to 10 years, mission officials said Tuesday.
Its work will be continued by a new device, the James Webb Space Telescope, due for launch from 2013 on a European Arian 5 rocket.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
