NASA may reschedule its next shuttle missions after a problem occurred with the Hubble Space Telescope. One of the space trips that may get postponed might be the programmed repair of the orbital observatory which was scheduled to be carried out in two weeks.

The space agency found out that the Hubble Space Telescope isn’t sending scientific data anymore. The problem occurred just as a team of astronauts was getting ready to launch on October 14 with shuttle Atlantis on a mission for repairs and upgrades. However, the latest entry on the list of repairs made the agency rethink and reconfigure the coming missions.

The problem was made public this morning by Kennedy Space Center Director Bill Parsons. He told reporters that the fault occurred during the weekend. Until he problem is fixed, the NASA personnel will try to switch to a backup system on board, but there will be left with no other options if that fails too.

NASA spokesman David Mould mentioned that the agency is currently assessing what needs to be done in order to fix the problem and what needs to be sent.

"If it's decided to send new equipment up that's not already scheduled to go, it could mean a delay. But right now we're not sure what, if anything, will be required," Mould said.

However, the qualification of the old replacement part that NASA plans to send would take time as the agency will have to prepare the mission again in detail. The astronauts have been training for the past two years for the mission that will involve five Hubble repair spacewalks.

"The teams are always looking at contingencies, and this is just something that has cropped up we have the ability to deal with. They're just trying to decide what direction we want to go," said NASA spokesman Michael Curie.