Hubble Telescope Revival Hits a Few Snags
The revival of the Hubble Space Telescope started "exactly as we hoped," a NASA spokesman said. But engineers had to halt the program after they found two anomalies in the electronic systems.
Hubble’s operations hit a snag when the main system that processed commands and data from between the telescope’s instruments and the ground stopped working. Controllers were sending commands up to Hubble and getting back diagnostic results, but the amount of continuous imagery that made the telescope well-known stopped.
This out of the blue problem caused the delay of the space shuttle Atlantis’ final service call, originally due for launch later this week.
To fix Hubble, engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center contrived a plan to switch the data flow from the central system, called Side A, to a backup system that has never been used before, called Side B.
The space agency gave their approval for the switchover on Tuesday, and engineers started working on it by Wednesday.
Engineers inspected Side B for the very first time.
NASA spokesman Ed Campion said by Thursday that, "All that went exactly as we hoped, so after that, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 were retrieved out of safe mode to establish that each of them has a good working interface to Side B.”
Hubble’s revamped electronics met their standards. "Everything worked the way we hoped it would," Campion said. "Now we’re going to send commands to begin internal exposures and calibrations of the science instruments."
The calibration data would be used to determine if Side B was working like Side A was prior to the breakdown. It is assumed that the operation did not go smoothly, based on a NASA update released Friday:
"Activitation of the Hubble Space Telescope science instruments and resumption of science observations have been suspended following two anomalies seen in systems onboard the telescope on Thursday. All of the telescope’s payloads are back in safe mode condition while engineers perform troubleshooting."
NASA should give more details about the situation later this evening.
Every glitch in Hubble’s progress hits the team working to get the telescope up and running hard. Prior to the current problems, Susan Hendrix, a NASA spokeswoman, stated that she took the telescope’s ups and downs personally.
"Hubble’s been very near and dear to me," she said. "It’s kind of like an adopted child."
Should Hubble continue to conduct scientific operations, the telescope will have some more problems to sort out. A spare unit is being checked out at Goddard right now, and if it meets and passes the tests, it will likely be brought up on Atlantis to be installed next year.
When the new unit is installed, Hubble’s data will flow through using the Side B electronics, and Side A would be considered backup.
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