This is the VOA SpecialEnglish Science Report.

American space agency astronauts will soon replace much of theequipment in the Hubble Space Telescope. The new equipment will helpthe Hubble produce much more information than it can today.

NASA plans to launch the Space Shuttle Columbia from the KennedySpace Center in Florida on February twenty-eighth. It will carryseven astronauts on an eleven-day flight to provide service to theHubble Space Telescope.

The Hubble was designed to permit astronauts to take it apart andreplace old or broken equipment with newer technology. More thanninety percent of its parts are designed to be replaced.

1993service flight

Columbia's astronauts will replaceHubble's camera with a new, advanced system. It will permit thespace telescope to do ten times the amount of work it can do now.The new camera is called the Advanced Camera for Surveys or A-C-S.

The A-C-S is three different cameras. Each deals with differentkinds of light. The cameras can see and record light that the humaneye can not see.

The Hubble will also receive new equipment that permits it tomake electric power from sunlight. The device will replace an olderone that has been in use for eight years. The new device willincrease Hubble's electric power by thirty percent.

Astronauts also will replace the device that controls Hubble'selectric power. The new power control device will permit Hubble touse the added power.

Astronauts will also repair an instrument called the NearInfrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. They will replace thecamera's cooling system. This special camera was placed on theHubble in Nineteen-Ninety-Seven. It stopped working two years laterafter its cooling device failed.

NASA hopes the new cooling device will be able to provide theextremely cold temperatures needed by this special camera. They alsohope to extend the camera's working life by several years.

Since its launch in Nineteen-Ninety, the Hubble Space Telescopehas made more than three-hundred-thirty-thousand scientificobservations of distant objects in space.

It has observed more than twenty-five-thousand space objects. Andit has provided scientific information that has helped researchersproduce more than two-thousand-six-hundred scientific papers.

This VOA Special English Science Report was written by PaulThompson.