Bringing back Hubble: another hiccup - October 17, 2008
Posted on behalf of Ashley Yeager
Hubble is blind and in a coma. It may be revived at some point but at the moment the telescope is in ‘safe mode’ after engineers detected two anomalies in its systems.
Nearly all scientific observations performed with the famous telescope were cut off on 27 September when a glitch occurred in Hubble’s main computer system, which processes and transmits data from its science instruments to Earth.
NASA engineers have been working this week to override the faulty computer and resurrect an 18-year-old spare from orbital hibernation to use instead. The backup system (Side B) was fired up for the first time on the night of 15 October.
"All that went exactly as we hoped,” NASA spokesman Ed Campion told MSNBC.com’s Alan Boyle.
So engineers then tested that this backup could talk to the telescope’s cameras and actually send information back to Earth. This is where things started to go wrong.
Hubble engineers detected what NASA describes as “two anomalies”. Now all of the telescope's computer systems and instruments are back in safe mode. Troubleshooting to determine the problems is currently underway and NASA is promising an updated status report shortly.
