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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-another-look dept.

After briefly going offline, NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescope is back in action

After briefly going into safe mode last week, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory — which observes galaxies and nebulas from Earth's orbit — should be getting back to normal operations soon. The cause of the disruption was a small glitch in one of the spacecraft's instruments used for steering and pointing. But the space agency has since fixed the problem, and the telescope will be back to observing the Universe by the end of the week.

[...] The glitch resulted in the gyro measuring three seconds of "bad data," which led Chandra's onboard computer to come up with the wrong value for the vehicle's momentum, according to NASA. This apparently prompted the safe mode. Now, NASA has decided to use one of Chandra's other gyros in its place and put the glitchy one on reserve.

Also at Space.com.

Previously: NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory Enters Safe Mode; Investigation Underway

Related: Puzzling X-Ray Emissions From Pluto
A New Stellar X-Ray 'Reality' Show Debuts
Galaxy Collision Creates Ring of Black Holes and Neutron Stars


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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 16 2018, @07:56AM (1 child)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday October 16 2018, @07:56AM (#749435) Homepage
    ... that there are still some software engineers building high quality products that don't rely on blue-sky assumptions. Anyone working on that - pat yourself on the back, the world needs more of the likes of you, no matter what your shirt patterns are.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 16 2018, @11:49AM (#749477)

    Actually, many of us software engineers are like that. Or would be, if we possibly could.

    You should be very thankful that we at least manage to keep resisting the blatantly fraudulent and the otherwise illegal - at great personal frustration and to maximized institutional contempt.

    What you make out to be incompetence are actually just the remnants of our continuing fight against unscrupulous racketeering, willful disregard of common human decency, and also of the law.

    So while I heartily join your rejoicing for the NASA engineers, I also ask for a little recognition for those of us who keep fighting that battle, by the ten-thousands, every day, unseen in our cubicles. Because without us, your software would feel about the same as "Somalia" feels to a US citizen right now, who has expectations of "actual USA".