CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  – The Space Shuttle Atlantis launched yesterday, allegedly on a repair mission to extend the life of the Hubble Telescope. However, sources reveal that the mission actually intends radical modifications to the telescope, changing it into a powerful weapon in the fight against illegal immigration.

According to sources within NASA, Hubble has outlived its usefulness as a telescope over the past two decades. Other, more modern telescopes will continue astronomy research, but Hubble will turn its gaze away from the heavens and instead look upon Earth in its new mission safeguarding the freedoms of peace loving Americans. The Astronauts will allegedly claim a catastrophic failure of this weeks repair mission, while secretly reconfiguring the telescope to function as a powerful death ray.

In this configuration, the death ray will apparently collect space particles from unknown sources, convert them into a giant red beam which looks suspiciously light-like, and direct that beam toward earth-based targets. This giant ray gun has the ability to destroy targets of various sizes, including people, buildings, crops and vehicles, but for reasons yet unknown it cannot destroy Frito’s™ corn chips or Wilford Brimley. Highly classified documents show that unlike most bad science fiction, the ray does not vaporize its target. Instead, it reduces targets into what the Air Force has dubbed “Hubble Rubble.”

A collaborating source close to people who know high-level officials within the Immigration and Naturalization Service hinted that the Air Force/NASA would cede control of the Hubble Death Ray™ to INS to eradicate the flow of illegal aliens entering the country through our southwest border. Hubble could patrol the entire border from 350 miles out in space, and heat signatures of anyone crossing the border would be treated as probable cause for their permanent removal from, or addition to, US soil. When asked about due process for these people, the INS official allegedly laughed and indicated that he didn’t care because “illegal aliens can’t afford lawyers.”

An Air Force General who opposed the project indicated that the Bush Administration originally conceived the idea and sanctioned the Space Shuttle reconfiguration mission in late 2003. Repeated delays after the 2004 elections pushed the project back several times, until the shuttle finally launched yesterday. Allegedly, after the change of power in Election 2008, high-level Air Force officials, working in conjunction with the INS, chose to continue in an unsanctioned capacity rather than briefing President Obama about the redesigned telescope, largely due to the belief that the President is too much of a pantywaist to ever go along with such a scheme.

Hubble, which has been producing appealing images since 1991, is expected to smash those durn forn’rs on our southern border into little itty bitty pieces for the next 20 years. Its current functions as a telescope will be replaced by the James Webb Telescope, tentatively scheduled for launch in 2013. It too, will someday be reconfigured into a giant death-dealing weapon, possibly as soon as 2014.

David Leckrone, the NASA Senior Engineer in charge of the Hubble Program, denied the report, stating “the Hubble Telescope would continue to function as always. Sorry, people,” he continued, “It’s not a ray gun. It’s still just a really expensive point-and-shoot camera. It’s still just going to take pretty pictures of random space stuff in an attempt to drive internet traffic to www.nationalgeographic.com.”