NASA Brings Hubble Space Telescope Back Online After Month In Safe Mode

NASA was able to provide The Hubble Space Telescope Payload Backup Computer online, according to a Twitter message of the telescope’s social media team. The announcement will bring a sigh of relief to space lovers, following a month of anguish find out if aging technology could be revived after slipped into a non-operational security mode in mid-June.

Now 31 years old, Hubble is a senior when it comes to space technology. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is expected to launch this fall after many delays. Hubble has entered safe mode numerous time before, more recently in March. But this stay lasted so long that it started to seem possible that the telescope had finally observed its last galaxy.

At first, the NASA team believed that the automatic shutdown of the telescope could have been caused by an ancient Memory module. But yesterday the installed team on the power control unit (PCU) like the real one problem. The PCU continuously supplies the computer with the telescope payload; if the 5 volts of electricity it supplies ever flickers or fluctuates, the telescope ceases its operations. As attempts to reset the PCU did not work, NASA decided to switch to backup hardware. It was a desperate measure after numerous troubleshooting attempts.

The switch to backup equipment has clearly proven to be the remedy. Aaccording to a NASA Press release, the team now started recovering the scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft from their respective security modes, a process that will take most of today. After ensuring that the instruments are at stable temperatures and correctly calibrated, Hubble goes resume normal science operations.

Soon the burden we put on this revered telescope will be less, as the prich JWST the telescope arrives in space and begins to observe the cosmos. But it would be nice if the two worked in tandem and for Hubble to live to see his heir take the throne of the space telescope.

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