Hubble telescope fails; NASA to delay shuttle
NASA said Monday that it is delaying its mission to the Hubble Space Telescope until next year because of a serious breakdown of the observatory in orbit.
Space shuttle Atlantis had been scheduled to blast off in just two weeks, but an unexpected problem with the Hubble appeared Saturday night, when the telescope stopped sending science data.
That potentially means a new repair issue for the astronauts to confront, one they haven't trained for and never anticipated. The failure of the command and data-handling system for Hubble's science instruments means the telescope is unable to capture and beam down the data needed to produce its stunning deep space images.
