NASA to decide whether to repair Hubble

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin plans to announce next week whether the U.S. space agency will send a space shuttle to repair the Hubble telescope.

If the go-head is given, astronauts would fix the telescope's batteries and stabilizing gyroscopes as well as add new instruments, USA Today said Friday.

Without the repairs, Hubble's batteries could fail as soon as 2008 and the gyroscopes a year later, Matt Mountain, of the Space Telescope Science Institute, told USA Today. The Baltimore-based facility manages Hubble's science operations.

The repairs, Mountain says, "would make it a brand new observatory," USA Today said.

The new equipment would allow Hubble to capture better views of the earliest galaxies and planets orbiting nearby stars, USA Today said.

Shuttle astronauts have repaired Hubble four times since it launched in 1990, USA Today said.