This is not the first time somebody has looked at keeping Hubble alive.

In 1999, a clutch of maverick scientists and engineers authored a HST10X study. They found that the Hubble Space Telescope could be augmented with new optics, giving it enough sightseeing power to detect Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars.

That study, fleshed out in just two months time, spelled out several ways to enhance Hubble. But major surgery would have to be done.

"Until recently such an endeavor was unthinkable," the Hubble 10X report states. The evolution of new lightweight optics, ultra-stable materials, new ways to control and point a telescope, coupled with spacewalking skills now in hand, now make the idea compelling, the study group found.

The team reported that augmenting HST was feasible, making it capable of producing more science in one year than Hubble can perform over several years.

While deemed interesting, the Hubble 10X study was run up the NASA flagpole. But nobody seems to have saluted, said one outside observer.

On the shuttle team that deposited the HST in orbit, McCandless and Hubble go way back, starting in 1978. He now works as chief scientist in Lockheed Martin's reusable space transportation systems group in Denver, Colorado.

"It was a matter of 12 years working together to make Hubble serviceable. We are all very pleased that it's been so successful," McCandless said.

"I feel very strongly about the Hubble Space 'Observatory', as I call it, being a valuable international resource. Since it is currently massively oversubscribed, we should take great pains to ensure that its replacement is fully operational before abandoning the Hubble," McCandless told SPACE.com.

Astronomers can't imagine life without Hubble, said Ray Villard, a spokesman for the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. "In a typical year's observing cycle, four times as many astronomers want to use Hubble as we have time to allot," he said.

Meanwhile, rumors afloat to keep Hubble alive longer are just that, said Seery of the NGST project.

"It's probably expected, given the emotional and fiscal investment in what has been recently touted as 'the most productive scientific observatory of all time'. However, HST archival data will probably keep the community going for years after HST is de-orbited, I suspect," Seery said.

Mather, of the NGST project, said that an unexpected servicing mission to Hubble could be very costly and perhaps impossible to arrange on a short time scale. "But the HST data archive is used by thousands of researchers and would have to carry us through until the NGST is ready," he said.

One is hopeful that HST will not fail and NGST will be funded, Mather said, so worries in some quarters about data gaps do not materialize.

Mather looks beyond HST, as well as the NGST. He sees a wealth of ideas and still-to-be-proven technologies on the horizon.

There are wonderful ideas for a successor to NGST, Mather said, "making use of technology that is not yet ready, but pursuing scientific goals we can already see are important."

"Planets are there to be found," Mather said, "and the entire domain of far infrared astronomy is wide open for new cold telescopes."