The Hubble Telescope, launched in 1990, is slowly getting old. It has been repaired many times, but it is still having problems.
Three weeks ago there was a glitch in the Hubble Telescope. (NASA)
Three weeks after science operations were shut down due to a glitch in the onboard computer, the Hubble Space Telescope is flying indiscriminately in space about 540 kilometers above Earth. NASA scientists are struggling to fix a ‘school bus’-sized telescope that was last repaired nearly a decade ago. Once again the ‘Eye of the Earth’ in space is facing disturbances.
NASA has completed testing the processes that will be used to reboot the payload computer, a process that could be tried on the telescope by next week. The Hubble Space Telescope team gave this information. The telescope was last repaired in 2009, after it was first deployed by the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990.
Mistakes have already come
During its more than three decades of service in above-Earth space, the telescope has encountered a number of glitches that were corrected in time to resume operations. However, it is taking longer than expected for the engineers to detect the current glitch and send the patch.
In the past, the telescope’s imaging spectrograph has faced glitches. The Imaging Spectrograph first encountered problems related to power outages in 2004 and again in 2007, affecting the Advance Camera for Surveys, the telescope’s primary camera.
NASA is confident of repair
Even though engineers are struggling to pinpoint the fault, NASA is confident of repairing it and restarting operations. NASA said in a statement that the telescope and its science instruments are in “good” condition and are currently in a safe configuration.
The payload computer controls and coordinates the science instruments on the spacecraft. After a sudden stop in the module, the computer stopped receiving the ‘keep-alive’ signal, which indicates that all is well. As soon as the error occurred, the main computer placed all the science equipment in a safe-mode configuration.
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