WASHINGTON: It had been a fantastic week for the US space programme. The little Mars lander was plugging away on the red planet, taking its first baby steps and snapping its first photos.

On Earth, US President George Bush injected new enthusiasm into the human space programme, announcing revival of moon missions and the building of a mission there for launching astronauts to Mars.

"In the past 30 years, no human being has set foot on another world or ventured farther up into space than (617 kilometres)," Bush said. "It is time for America to take the next steps."

But all things have their price. And by week's end, to the shock and dismay of scientists involved in the programme, one of the costs would become the world's first orbiting space telescope - the Hubble.

The eye that gave astronomers unprecedented glimpses billions of years back in time, to the early days of galaxies and the growth of "dark energy", would be allowed to die a slow and unserviced death.

The crown jewel of astronomy would probably shut down and crash to earth sometime around 2007, Nasa scientists said. "This is a sad day," said Nasa's chief scientist John Grunsfeld, an astronaut who helped upgrade Hubble in 2000, on Friday. "But I have to tell you, as somebody very close to the project ... they made the right decision. It's one that's in the best interest of Nasa."

Nasa said it would halt the shuttle missions to service the Hubble because of a new directive, announced on Wednesday by Bush, to retire the shuttle by 2010 because of safety concerns after the loss of the Columbia nearly a year ago.

To replace the shuttle, a new spacecraft, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), will be developed and tested for its first manned mission by 2014, Bush said, with the possibility of the first moon mission as early as 2015.

The shuttle will continue to service the International Space Station, where astronauts can examine and repair problems similar to the damage that caused the Columbia to disintegrate. But next year's planned trip to service the Hubble, intended to upgrade the space telescope with new gyroscopes, batteries, an advanced camera and light-splitting spectograph, was cancelled, Grunsfeld said.

The announcement triggered shock in the rarefied world of astronomy. "I think this is a mistake," David Spergel, a member of a committee that advises Nasa, was quoted as saying by The New York Times. He said the Hubble was still delivering images at the forefront of science.

"This is a pretty nasty turn of events, coming immediately on the heels of (Bush's) endorsement of space exploration," another scientists, Tod Lauer, was quoted as saying.-dpa