High stakes in NASA's last visit to Hubble

NASA will on Monday launch the shuttle Atlantis and seven astronauts into orbit on a high-risk last service mission to one of the greatest scientific instruments ever, the space telescope Hubble.

There is no room for error, the US space agency warned this week, in the fifth and final maintenance operation on the Hubble before the shuttle fleet is retired. If all goes well, NASA says the telescope's long-overdue service will extend the star-gazer's life by at least five years.

"If successful we will be entering our second quarter century. That's not bad for a mission that we hoped will last for 10 to 15 years," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's science missions directorate.

Hubble "will be more powerful and robust than ever before and will continue to enable world class science for at least another five years an overlap with the James Webb Space Telescope" its successor, he added.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has long been considered the greatest tool in the history of astronomy. Using powerful instruments to peer into deep space, it has provided profound insights into the origins and evolution of the universe.