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Anti-aristarchus writes:

NASA is fixing a computer glitch on a giant telescope in space. That's just as hard as it sounds:

After more than a month of testing and trying, NASA's engineers have finally diagnosed the source of an ongoing glitch on Hubble, the 31-year-old giant telescope that is currently orbiting in space almost 600 kilometers away from Earth.

On 13th June, Hubble automatically placed all of its science instruments on standby as a security measure following the failure of the telescope's payload computer – one of the central systems that controls and coordinates the instruments onboard the spacecraft, and transmits science and engineering data to the ground.

[...] Although Hubble's team has now identified the PCU [(Power Control Unit)] as the source of the glitch, it is only the start of the fix. It is impossible to reset the component using ground commands, meaning that NASA's team will have to switch to the backup side of the SI C&D [(Science Instrument Command and Data Handling)] module that contains the backup PCU.

This is a complex and risky operation, because it is likely to impact several other hardware boxes on the spacecraft that are also connected to this particular side of the SI C&D module.

"Every time we swap components in the operational chain, we treat it as a big deal," Paul Hertz, NASA's astrophysics division director, told ZDNet. "We want to make sure we do it correctly, that we think of all the possible consequences of making that change, that we send the correct commands up to the spacecraft, so that it does the swap over in the correct and safe manner."

[...] The switch will be carried out over the next few days, and NASA's engineers are hopeful that the operation will allow Hubble to resume its normal scientific observations as soon as possible.

Other sources say that today, Thursday July15th, is the day. Fingers crossed.

Also at c|net and phys.org.

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