spacetoday.net: Hubble problems to delay repair mission

Posted: Tue, Sep 30, 2008, 6:22 AM ET (1022 GMT)
Hubble Space Telescope (NASA)

A new problem with the Hubble Space Telescope will delay a shuttle mission to repair the orbiting telescope until early next year. Hubble stopped transmitting data from its instruments on Saturday, a problem traced to the failure of a data formatting unit on the telescope. A backup unit is available, but telescope engineers want to better understand the problem, as well as the uncertain status of the backup system. Because of the problem, NASA decided Monday to delay the planned October 14 launch of the STS-125 Hubble repair mission to better understand the impact of the problem on the planned repairs, as well as possibly install a spare unit currently on the ground. The mission had been tentatively rescheduled for mid-February, but additional delays are possible. The STS-125 delay will not affect the following shuttle mission, STS-126, scheduled to launch in November on an ISS assembly mission.