Hubble trouble doubled

An attempt to revive the malfunctioning Hubble Space Scope, which orbits Earth, didn't travel arsenic scientists had planned.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration/STScI

If you're already concerned about the ailing Hubble Space Scope, the drama continues.

Connected September 27, specialised difficulties shut down the telescope, and it stopped sending information to Earth. On October 15, NASA engineers were able to reboot the system, and immediately the scope sent data back to Earth again. All seemed fountainhead.

But the next day, on October 16, some malfunctions blinking the telescope downcast again. These developments are the latest in a series of setbacks for the famous space telescope. The Hubble has been orbiting Earth for 18 years. During that time, information technology has seized more spectacular and innovational images.

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The original trouble, in past September, started with a device that collects scientific data from the telescope's instruments and turns that data into images that people can admire and study. When the device failed, however, the images stopped flowing in.

But the scientists were in luck. Hubble had a backup interpretation of the damaged equipment, called the skill instrument check and data handling system. On October 15, to get the equipment up and squirting again, the scientists switched happening this fill-in.

The data-collection device has to work together with a bunch of opposite instruments happening the telescope. Thus, after the engineers had switched over to the backup, they turned on several of these other instruments to puddle sure they were communicating correctly.

A data formatting pawn on the Edwin Hubble Space Telescope has malfunctioned, leaving the orbiting observatory unable to air information to Earth.

NASA

Satisfied that the switch went well, the scientists turned the instruments back up, putt them into a state of hibernation. The instruments had been therein same "safe mode" since the seminal malfunction in September.

After a serial publication of tests and adjustments, the engineers gradually started to awake these instruments. But the team ran into trouble the next day, October 16, when two problems caused the wake-finished to stop.

In an October 17 teleconferencing, NASA scientists said that it was too presently to know exactly what's gone wrongly.

"We are in the early stages of loss through a mountain of data that has been downloaded," said Artwork Whipple, managing director of the Hubble Systems Management Office at NASA Goddard Infinite Flight Center in Greenway, Md., at the teleconference. "This is a marathon, not a sprint."

After looking through and through all of the data, scientists all over that these latest problems were not hard and didn't cause any lasting damage to Edwin Powell Hubble. In fact, the team up is going to try to wake up Hubble's skill equipment again on October 25.

Hubble faces other troubles, too. Glitches since 2007 have put a fewer of the telescope's instruments come out of the closet of operation, including the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Near Infrared Television camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer.

Repairs on those instruments leave have to wait until Feb 2009, when a team of astronauts will head to Hubble on a servicing mission. The trip, it seems, volition be a employed one.

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