Shuttle astronauts will make one final house call to the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a mission to extend and improve the observatory’s capabilities. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin announced plans for a fifth servicing mission to Hubble today during a meeting with agency employees at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The 11-day rehab mission, likely launching early May 2008 using space shuttle Discovery, would keep Hubble working until about 2013. Its batteries and gyroscopes, which are used to point the telescope, are degrading and they will now be replaced. The shuttle crew will also install two new instruments: the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The new instruments will improve significantly Hubble’s ability to probe distant, faint objects in the early Universe. Griffin also announced the astronauts selected for the mission. Veteran astronaut Scott D. Altman will command the final space shuttle mission to Hubble. Navy Reserve Capt. Gregory C. Johnson will serve as pilot. Mission specialists include veteran spacewalkers John M. Grunsfeld and Michael J. Massimino and first-time space fliers Andrew J. Feustel, Michael T. Good and K. Megan McArthur. Altman will be making his fourth spaceflight and his second trip to Hubble. He commanded the STS-109 Hubble servicing mission in 2002. Grunsfeld, an astronomer, will be making his third trip to Hubble and his fifth spaceflight. He performed five spacewalks to service the telescope on STS-103 in 1999 and STS-109 in 2002. Massimino will be making his second trip to Hubble and his second spaceflight. He performed two spacewalks to service the telescope during the STS-109 mission in 2002.