CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin turned astronomers' Halloween into Christmas with the announcement to send astronauts on a final mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. "We are going to add a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to the shuttle's manifest to be flown before it retires," Griffin told workers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland on Tuesday.
The mission will prolong the life of an instrument that has captured some of the most spectacular images of the universe.
At least three astronauts planned to be available for a news conference in Houston Tuesday afternoon. Astronauts already have been training for Hubble-specific tasks.
Former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe canceled a Hubble mission in the wake of the Columbia shuttle disaster that killed seven astronauts in 2003. Griffin, who succeeded him, said he would reconsider the decision if the space shuttles could return to flying on a regular schedule without serious problems.
A rehab mission would keep Hubble working until about 2013. It would add two new camera instruments, upgrade aging batteries and stabilizing equipment, add new guidance sensors and repair a light-separating spectrograph. Without a servicing mission, Hubble will likely deteriorate in 2009 or 2010.
"I believe the risks are worth the reward of going into space for just about any mission, in particular the Hubble mission," said astronaut Jim Newman, who was on the last space shuttle mission to Hubble in 2002.