The Hubble Space Telescope may be too expensive to maintain and/or too dangerous to fix according to some members of Congress who heard a report from leading scientists today.

It is estimated that repairing Hubble would cost approximately $2 billion. The budget deficit and the priority President Bush is placing on the war on Iraq may necessitate that funds go elsewhere.

'We have to make hard choices about whether a Hubble mission is worth it now, when moving ahead is likely to have an adverse impact on other programs, including quite possibly other programs in astronomy,' said Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican congressman from New York.

Preliminary discussions about President Bush's proposed 2006 budget do not include funds to repair Hubble and would have the telescope return to earth in an uninhabited ocean area.

Hubble needs additional repairs because its batteries and gyroscope are expected to fail within a few years. Sending the space shuttle up to do repairs was the original plan but since the Columbia disaster, that has been deemed too risky and impractical.

The latest plan to make repairs on Hubble involves using robots in space...if Congress allocates funds to do the job.