ESA Reports Instrument Delays on Herschel

The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that one of the three main instruments aboard the Herschel Space Telescope had malfunctioned, and that it was been taken offline one month ago. At this point, there is no time frame as to when the device will be brought back online, if ever. Because of the flaw, the observatory's mission, of examining the early Universe, is considerably impeded, as all of the instruments are needed for accurate results, Nature News reports.

The damaged device is the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared, or HIFI, which is the telescope's high-resolution spectrometer. It was designed to identify and analyze elusive molecules that could be found in the space between stars, as well as in areas of intense stellar formations. The HIFI shut down unexpectedly and for yet-unknown reasons on August 3rd. On August 14th, it was revealed on the Herschel Science Center's blog that the voltage supply for the instrument's control electronics might have been damaged, and the extent of the needed repairs was not yet known.

According to experts, it may be that the craft, or the instrument, collided with an energetic cosmic ray particle, which might have caused the damage. This type of occurrences is not unheard of, as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Martian rover Spirit were also struck by similar cosmic ray particles. The idea belonged to the principal investigator for the HIFI, Frank Helmich, an expert at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, in Groningen, the Netherlands. “That really would be a case of bad luck,” he said of the possibility.

Project managers revealed that there was no reason to believe that HIFI's problems would impact the overall mission. The only influence that the malfunctions will have is in terms of time, which Herschel has enough of. Mission controllers have the option to switch on a back-up system for the instrument, but they are unwilling to do so until they are sure that nothing more can be done with the primary system. In addition, they also have to ensure that the redundancy system is operational, and that it's safe to turn it on.