NASA will be forced to further delay the precarious Hubble Space Telescope repair, as a new glitch forced the U.S. space agency to re-think its repair strategy since the satellite stopped working on September 27.

Hubble started suffering problems after its primary data platter failed, and engineers have been unable to switch to the backup system.

The repair process began last Wednesday and continued into the next day, but several problems occurred sometime Thursday afternoon.  The first problem was that a low-voltage power supply wouldn't let engineers restart one of the Hubble's cameras, and then computer problems arose.

NASA hoped to have Hubble fully operational on three days, but must now wait and patiently see if it can fix the problem before the end of the year.

"The soonest that we would be back doing full science would be late" this week, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble manager Art Whipple said in a statement over the weekend.

It remains unknown when Hubble will be able to again send photos back to researchers at Goddard.  The telescope will continue to orbit 350 miles above Earth, only able to perform health and safety inspections, with all of its science observations on hold.

NASA expected to launch a manned mission to repair Hubble for the final time, but the scheduled October launch has been delayed until February 2009, mission managers said prior to the Hubble repair attempt.  This latest problem shouldn't cause a further delay for the shuttle launch.

Hubble has helped astronomers better understand the origin and evolution of the universe, while also providing amazing photographs of galaxies.  No other telescope has been able to look so far into space, and NASA hopes Hubble is able to work until 2013, when James Webb Space Telescope is expected to launch.