WASHINGTON, May 24 (RIA Novosti) - The Atlantis space shuttle carrying a crew returning from the Hubble telescope will make a third attempt to land on Sunday, NASA said.

"The next opportunity is 10:11 a.m. EDT Sunday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida," the space agency said.

Atlantis was originally scheduled to land on Friday at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, but the date was rescheduled for Saturday and then for Sunday due to poor weather conditions.

NASA said that the Atlantis crew would have to be diverted to the Edwards Air Force base in California if the Sunday landing window failed, although this option would require additional expense.

The Atlantis space shuttle took off from Cape Canaveral on May 11 with seven astronauts on board. The STS-125 eleven-day mission, the final shuttle flight to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, was aimed at updating observatory equipment.

A total of five spacewalks were carried out to install new instruments and thermal blankets, repair two existing instruments, refurbish subsystems and replace gyroscopes, batteries and a unit that stores and transmits data.