Hubble science still on hold - October 17, 2008
Posted on behalf of Ashley Yeager
Hubble will remain blind and comatose until late next week — at the earliest.
Trouble with the space telescope began on 27 September when a glitch occurred in the computer system that processes and transmits data to Earth. NASA engineers began trying to resurrect a back-up system to restore operations on 15 October, but the mission went awry in its second day.
Everything was going well until engineers began firing up the scientific instruments. That’s when the one of the cameras shut itself down due to a problem with a power source, said Art Whipple, manager of Hubble operations at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
While diagnosing that malfunction, engineers received transmissions indicating that an unknown problem with one of the computer systems caused a cascade of events that sent the entire telescope into safe mode, Whipple explained during a press conference on Friday.
Fortunately, he said, Hubble can still transmit data to the ground and did perform a “data dump” so telescope operators can assess the anomalies and hopefully solve the problem. Prior to firing up the backup computer system, the scientists could not get data from many of the instruments.
Shifting through all the data will, of course, take time, but Whipple said he and the Hubble team are optimistic that they can bring the telescope back online possibly late next week. As for the last Hubble servicing mission, the new problems do not currently appear to affect it, Whipple said.
For more information and updates, check out the Hubble Internet site.
