The recent meteorological reports according to which 1-Cathegory hurricane Gustav is getting stronger and heading for Florida could determine NASA to delay it much-expected, highly—anticipated Hubble Telescope repair mission, said space agency officials in an interview with ABCNews.com.

The launch pad of Space Shuttle Atlantis was scheduled to roll out midnight Sunday, but NASA doesn’t carry out any launches if bad weather is expected and hurricane Gustav is heading straight to the Kennedy Space Center. The space agency plans to roll the Atlantis Shuttle out of its assembly building at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

The Kennedy Space Center was shut down for three days last week as tropical storm Fay threatened the region, but the space agency managed to recover the lost time.

"They really jumped on it and were able to keep the schedule intact," KSC spokesman George Diller said about the engineers preparing NASA's final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission.

The launch is scheduled for October 8th.

The latest weather report from the National Weather Center gave worrying details about hurricane Gustav, which is gathering strength and, with winds of 100 mph, could turn into a Category 2 hurricane later today. Its next target will most certainly be Haiti and then it will probably head for Cuba.

Seven astronauts will take off in the Atlantis with the mission to equip Hubble with new gear. The new science instruments and devices will enable the Hubble Space Telescope to continue functioning until at least 2013. The crew will resume preparations for the upcoming mission on Monday at NASA's Johnson Space Center.