Nasa to enlist robot to save telescope

WASHINGTON - Nasa has decided to try to save the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope by sending a Canadian-made robot to fix it.

Nasa administrator Sean O'Keefe told researchers at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland about the plan, instructing engineers to begin work to put the robotic mission in to space in 2007.

"Everybody says, 'We want to save the Hubble' - well, let's go save the Hubble," O'Keefe was quoted as saying by the Orlando Sentinel. "Rather than just sitting there and talking about how we think we're going to do it, we've got an option we're ready to go with."

It will cost at least US$1 billion ($1.53 billion) to save the telescope, which has peered back to the very beginnings of the universe, found planets outside our solar system and taken dramatic pictures of stars being born.

Scientists who have used the telescope to explore the origins of the cosmos and look for places that extraterrestrial life might exist are delighted by the decision.

Al Diaz, Nasa's Science Mission Directorate associate administrator, said it might be possible to add a further five years to the life of the ageing telescope.

The telescope's fate has been uncertain since the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated before landing last year. A shuttle mission set for next year that would have replaced batteries and repaired broken gyroscopes used to aim the telescope was cancelled.

If not maintained, the telescope is expected to stop providing useful data by 2007 or 2008.

- REUTERS