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Hubble has a problem. NASA says that one of the cameras on the almost 30-year-old space telescope – the Wide Field Camera 3 – is no longer operational because of a hardware problem.
"WFC3 is the major imaging instrument on HST [Hubble Space Telescope]. It is, frankly, the best view of the heavens that humanity has," Simon Porter, an astrophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, wrote on Twitter. "But apparently some bloody fence is more important."
Although the Hubble Space Telescope has been observing the sky since 1990, the WFC3 was added just 10 years ago during a service mission. Over the last decade it has captured spectacular images, including a high-resolution version of the iconic 'Pillars of Creation' – a gas cloud inside the Eagle Nebula that was first imaged by Hubble back in 1995.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @02:56AM (1 child)
Can new target(s) be found for the New Horizons probe without Hubble? Hubble found Ultima Thule. Not sure if Earth scopes are good enough, and the James Webb telescope is about 3 years away at least.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @03:21AM
New Horizons will remain in the Kuiper belt for years to come (still has another 12+ AU left).
My hope is that the LSST [wikipedia.org] would be able to find a target. It starts full operations in 2022. I also hope that LSST will find Planet Nine if it exists.
There is also the possibility of using New Horizons to find its own target, but it will probably need to transmit 20 months of data first.
No matter how you look at it, it could take 2-3 years to find the next target if Hubble is off of the table. However, Wide Field Camera 3 contains redundant electronics and is likely to be fixed soon [astronomynow.com].
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