NASA Chief Weighing Repair Mission for Hubble Telescope

Trouble aboard the Hubble Space Telescope could interrupt the flow of astronomical data for about a year unless repairs are made, NASA chief Dan Goldin said Wednesday. He said he will decide in the next few days whether to approve a “rapid response” repair mission in October.

The problem is the orbiting telescope’s gyroscopes, which help keep the spacecraft steady and point it in the right direction to capture often astonishing images of cosmic phenomena. Hubble needs three gyros to operate at its best, and there are six aboard the craft. But two of the redundant gyros stopped working in 1997 and 1998, respectively, and a third started showing anomalies in January. Two of the remaining gyros were part of the craft’s original equipment when it was launched in 1990 and a third was installed during a repair mission in 1993. The next scheduled repair mission is set for June 2000.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II