NASA TO PROVIDE UPDATE TO HUBBLE ANOMALY STATUS

NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, Oct. 14, to brief reporters about the status of efforts to revive the data handling unit that failed on the Hubble Space Telescope in late-September. The failure halted almost all science operations on the orbiting observatory.

A meeting will be held at NASA Headquarters on Tuesday morning to review plans for transitioning operations to the redundant "B" side of Hubble's data handling unit. This equipment has not been used or tested since Hubble's launch in 1990. If approved, ground controllers could begin the process of sending commands to Hubble as early as Wednesday, Oct. 15, to begin the transition. The process could take as long as 48 hours to complete.

The briefing participants are:
- Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
- Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Space Telescope Systems Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters in the U.S. should call 1-866-556-1095 and use the pass code "Hubble." International reporters should call 1-212-547-0420.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio