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Hubble Telescope Camera Breaks – and U.S. Shutdown Might Delay Repair

posted by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @12:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the trubble dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @02:56PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @02:56PM (#785041)

    The beast at Tenagra. Shaka, when the walls fell. Trump at the Rubicon [wsws.org] (recently watched ST:TNG Darmok with my boyfriend and couldn't resist):

    Following the stolen election of 2000, the Bush administration used the 9/11 terrorist attacks to rush through the passage of the Patriot Act and implement a series of unconstitutional policies, including indefinite detention, torture and warrantless domestic surveillance. The pseudo-legal rationale was that the president, as commander-in-chief of the military, has virtually unlimited powers.

    The Obama administration used this precedent to claim the right to assassinate American citizens, including within the borders of the United States, without due process, and to impose martial law in Boston in 2013.

    Trump, in his unvarnished criminality, is bringing this process to a culmination by using a “state of emergency” to oppose Congress in a domestic political crisis.

    A political Rubicon is being crossed.

    The term “crossing the Rubicon” originates with the decision of Julius Caesar to violate Roman law by crossing into Italy with an army in 49 BC. That action set the stage for civil war, the collapse of the Roman republic and the establishment of empire—effectively an absolute dictatorship.

    Trump’s threat to defy Congress through a state of emergency constitutes just such a historical turning point: one which, once undertaken, cannot be reversed.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:28PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @05:28PM (#785138)

    And this site is filled with Trump shills still pushing a pto-Trump message. Getting pretty sad around here

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:23PM (#785254)

      Wow, one more national emergency on top of the 30 already in existence that the same people never complained about. The total hypocrisy is so obnoxious, only people in the choir could read that without cringing..

      This is in no way a new/special "crossing the rubicon" event, it is the continuation of a very, very bad decades long trend that pretty much only libertarians have been consistently complaining about. But libertarians are all "crazy racists", so who cares... ORANGE MAN BAD my friend, orange man bad, feel the hate.

  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday January 11 2019, @07:30PM (1 child)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday January 11 2019, @07:30PM (#785181) Journal

    And no, Trump is not crossing any kind of river with this. (Or at least, Trump supporters - which I am not one - might see this as a crossing of the Delaware, not the Rubicon.)

    It is not something which cannot be undone, nor is it something that Congress has to take lying down. Just because Congress *wouldn't* repudiate the emergency with a bill denying him the authority to build the wall does not mean that they *cannot* do so. Nor does it mean Trump would not respect such an order. Yes it is clear that Congress doesn't want to fund it and Trump should get the message, and he should start thinking he is a President and not an Emperor. But it doesn't mean the foundations of the law are torn down, either.

    If you're looking for who to pin it on blame FDR [wikipedia.org].

    --
    This sig for rent.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:43PM (#785271)

      I don't get the FDR blame from that link.