Hubble Starts to Wake Up

The latest efforts of the specialists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have so far proved successful. They eventually managed to resurrect the Hubble Space Telescope's Side B computers, and are currently observing their behavior until the end of the week. If all goes well and no other failures occur in the meanwhile, the experts will switch on the telescope's instruments, and resume their scientific observations.

 

The crisis started almost one month ago, on September 27, when the main data relay channel (Side A) of Hubble's Science Instrument Control and Data Handling system, which allows it to send the gathered data back to Earth, suffered a glitch. As explained in a recent article, the two affected instruments were the main camera, which registered a voltage lower than the operable level, and the payload computer (that controls the science instruments), which lost communication with the main one. The first attempt to switch to a backup one (Side B) failed, as both the payload computer and the data formatter device reset.

 

However, although the causes of the glitch still elude technicians, on Thursday at 11:15 am EDT (1515 GMT), the payload computer was restored, and has been functioning properly ever since. After dismissing any command or software as a source for the errors, Art Whipple, NASA's manager of the Hubble Systems Management Office said that, “We cannot know the exact cause, of course, because we cannot get to the hardware. All we can say is that it appears to have been to have been an electrical event.” “It is possible that we may see another event of this type in the future,” he added, while also expressing content that the current one “[did] not appear to have done any permanent damage” to the instruments.

 

“We are up to the same place we were at about 8 o'clock Wednesday night of last week,” stated Whipple. Nevertheless, if nothing happens, the beginning of next week will see Hubble up and running normally again. The crisis caused the delay of the last servicing mission for Hubble, from October 14 until sometime at the beginning of next year, a postponement that translates into a $10 million monthly loss for NASA. When it eventually takes place, the mission will attempt to change the tray in which Sides A and B are located, place a new camera device, replace old batteries and some gyroscopes, upgrade the guidance devices, as well as install a docking ring.