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Hubble Space Telescope may not be down for the count.
Story at Slashgear:
NASA's quest to repair the Hubble Space Telescope and restart scientific observations has had some good news, though efforts to fix the aging spacecraft still present some serious risks. More than three decades old now, Hubble unexpectedly went into its so-called safe mode in mid-June after the payload computer responsible for managing the telescope shut down.
Safe mode is, as the name suggests, a protective state within which minimal ongoing damage is possible. At the time, NASA said that it had no indication that the Hubble spacecraft was damaged or malfunctioning, but efforts to power up the payload computer again met with failure.
By current Earth standards, the tech onboard Hubble is hardly cutting-edge. While the space telescope may be peering at galaxies billions of light years away, it's running computers designed by NASA back in the 1970s. In fact, the instrument has two payload computers – located on the Science Instrument and Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit – with one acting as a backup.
In theory, NASA should be able to power up that backup and bring Hubble back online, but attempts to do that in late June 25 met with the same problem. Hubble was unable to write to, or read from, its memory banks.
On to plan B!
Testing the next theory, though, is more of a risk. It's possible that Hubble's Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) – responsible for sending and formatting commands and data – could be experiencing an error; alternatively, a power regulator within the Power Control Unit could be at fault. Hubble has backups of both, but switching to them is trickier than just flicking over the payload computer and memory modules.
That's because the backup CU/SDF and power regulator are also linked to other hardware on the spacecraft itself, which so far NASA has been able to leave untouched. Get it wrong, and there's a far higher likelihood of lasting damage that efforts to fix from Earth couldn't address.
Difference between a brick, and a brick in orbit, is that if you brick your phone or laptop, you can still use it for a paperweight.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @02:15AM (3 children)
You just get paperweightlesses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @02:50AM (2 children)
Paperweightlessness?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @03:13AM (1 child)
paper weights in orbit sometimes turn into flaming bricks in your front window. this is less common wit a phone or laptop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @03:52AM
Blue ice is a bigger (and stinkier) problem.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @04:26AM
Is that Musk or Bezos? I can't tell them apart.. but hell, they can afford to have it fixed
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @10:16AM (2 children)
Who needs an expensive telescope? Just feed a stream of random data to NASA's staff artists, and tell them to conceptualize what you need to see to get continued funding. Look, it's a nebula shaped like Nancy Pelosi!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @10:18AM (1 child)
>> Look, it's a nebula shaped like Nancy Pelosi!
The universe isn't that old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 12 2021, @01:24AM
But it is that evil. More of a sense of humor about it, though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AnonTechie on Sunday July 11 2021, @10:17AM (3 children)
It is heartening to know that NASA has a Plan B. I would hate to see the venerable Hubble Telescope fade away into the sunset without a whimper. Over the years, I have enjoyed the Hubble photographs with its unprecedented details (this will soon change, as Earth bound telescopes, with more modern technology, will have same (or better) resolution than the Hubble).
Looking forward to many more years of Hubble photos ... All the best NASA. Hope your plan B works flawlessly !!
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @11:18AM (1 child)
31+ years is a long lifetime for a space telescope. The real tragedy is that it's still the best telescope of its class in orbit.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 12 2021, @03:06PM
Hopefully the James Webb telescope won't be 31 years old by the time it is eventually launched.
Or maybe it can go straight to the museum without ever getting launched.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13 2021, @02:18PM
Except for all those LEO satellites StarLink and other Internet provider companies are launching.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 11 2021, @02:05PM
Super Heavy should open up new possibilities; you can now launch a huge telescope at a fraction of old launch costs