The beloved Hubble Space Telescope may get a new lease on life after all. Late last summer, NASA nixed its controversial decision to retire the aging instrument and instead will consider asking Congress for roughly $1 billion to plan and launch a robotic repair mission by late 2007.


The leading contender for a Hubble house call: a 3,664-pound, two-armed robot named Dextre. The robot, made by MD Robotics in Brampton, Canada, is about