Baltimore
NASA last week promised to reconsider plans to abandon the Hubble Space Telescope to an early death. Under orders from President Bush to return to the moon, the space agency in mid-January decided to cancel a 2006 shuttle mission to upgrade the orbiting telescope. Without the tuneup, Hubble will flicker out before its scheduled retirement, in 2010. Astronomers flooded the space agency and the Hubble lab, in Baltimore, with pleas to keep the telescope sending back photos. “Its ability to peer into the distant universe is unparalleled,” said scientist Bruce Betts. NASA asked a retired Navy admiral to study whether was it worth the risk to launch the shuttle mission to keep Hubble functioning.
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