NASA says the Webb Space Telescope's Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph is currently unavailable for science operations following a software glitch earlier this month.
In a release published yesterday, the agency stated that the issue started on January 15, when a communications delay within the instrument caused its flight software to time out. Flight software is a crucial aspect of any instrument operating in space, as it manages a whole suite of operations on a given spacecraft, including its orientation, communications, data collection, and thermal control.
[...] There have also been some software hiccups. In August, the telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (or MIRI) had a software glitch that paused its operations through November. And in December, there was an issue with the telescope's attitude control, which manages where the telescope is pointing. The glitch put the telescope into safe mode multiple times last month.
[...] Webb has done some tremendous work so far and will continue to illuminate the most ancient and murky regions of the cosmos. You can check out some of what's on the docket, along with other astronomy plans for the year, here.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday January 27, @03:21PM (7 children)
Could the glitch be caused by a voltage drop on a power bus due to a sudden large electrical load?
Webb must have some amazingly powerful spotlights that consume a great deal of power.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Funny) by captain normal on Friday January 27, @05:35PM (6 children)
Redundant?? Come on now, that was worth a chuckle. How many languages have multiple meanings for the same word.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, @06:21PM (5 children)
...um... All of them??
What do I win?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday January 27, @07:30PM (3 children)
Ironically I believe English stands out as especially word-abundant. Like, other supposedly big languages are really just inflected or tend to list obvious combination as new words (imagine "word-abundant" being listed as a new word...). But English just lost all the borrowings grammar and ended up depending on lexicon for everything.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28, @12:17AM (2 children)
Perhaps you could instruct me in the proper usage of "coger" in Spanish. That - and inform me which language does not have any such word whose meaning has been overloaded for the convenience of double entendre. It's human nature.
Otherwise, yours is just another screwed up assertion.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday January 28, @02:34AM (1 child)
The irony was that an English speaker assumed English is unusual in having many words with multiple meanings, when, in fact, English stands out as one of the few languages that keeps coming up with new words for every variation possible.
Anyhow, I hear Lojban does a lot to reduce ambiguity in both grammar and vocabulary.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28, @03:33AM
Oh...I get it...thanks...and sorry for snapping at you. Like rain on your wedding day.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 28, @03:59PM
You didn't specify natural language. I'm sure there's some conlang that doesn't.
Wait, you didn't specify human language either. I'm pretty sure BASIC (the original language, not anything with "Visual" in its name) didn't have words with multiple meanings.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.