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NASA has not tuned the Hubble Space Telescope as it does for routers: turn off and on again
This is not the best month for the Hubble Space Telescope.
During the first week of October, one of three shuttle gyroscopes failed. The giant telescope needs devices allowing it to measure rotational speeds and focus on objects observed and photographed in space.
In a statement, NASA badured the public that the blackout was expected, saying the gyroscope "had been exposed at the end of the race". life behavior for about a year "and, in any case," two other gyroscopes of the same type had already failed. "
To replace it, NASA engineers have powered a standby gyroscope since early 2011 They were comforted at first The gyroscope started spinning despite not being used for 7 ½ years, however, it returned significantly higher values.
The Difference was "similar to a speedometer on your car constantly showing that your speed is 100 miles faster than it actually is," said NASA. well when your car is accelerating or slowing down, and by how much, but the actual speed is imprecise. "
The engineers concluded that the problem was to be a kind of mechanical obstruction. NASA has maintained the telesco eg in "safe mode", thus limiting its operations in the same way that a computer of this mode worked in the raw state.
Keeping the telescope in safe mode also meant "we were not doing it" scientist, "Patrick Crouse, Project Manager, Hubble Operations," told the Washington Post.
Several days have pbaded. [19659003] NASA teams conducted tests, examined the flight software and considered what they could do to remedy the problem with as little damage as possible for their valuable (and expensive) telescope. the Hubble can work with fewer gyroscopes, it normally uses three for maximum efficiency.)
On October 16, the Hubble team even attempted a "restart in progress", turning off the problematic gyroscope for a while. second, then back on again .. Unfortunately, the "did you try to turn it off and turn it on?" The approach – long favored as a first resort by the technical support staff on Te rre – did not work in space. Crouse said it would be as easy as that.
Instead, what seemed to work was to repeatedly turn the entire Hubble spacecraft to see if it would "dislodge" anything that was blocking the gyroscope in question.
Repeated maneuvers seemed to Crouse said, "We always believed, or very early, that the gyroscope seemed to be useful and fair.
Crouse interrupted when asked to explain what had happened in simple terms.
"At a high level, if people want to call him trembling, I guess they can," he said. "But we were trying to do some very special activities that we thought would solve the problem, and it was certainly not as simple as turning it off and on again."
Still, that did not stop many media from talking. to report that NASA had repaired its telescope "as you repair your router."
"NASA repairs the Hubble gyroscope by turning it off and on again," Engadget said Wednesday.
"What set NASA's Hubble Space Telescope? USA Today followed.
Crouse stated that these headlines were" simplistic to the extreme ", although # 39, he can understand the confusion surrounding highly technical issues.
"It's hard to keep everyone informed about the current process," he said. "I can understand that some people have may have chosen the easy way. But to situate ourselves where we are [with Hubble] we are very optimistic. We are not yet at the end of our sentences, but we are very optimistic that we can go back to science again. "
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in orbit in 1990, and since its first photo – a grainy and disappointing black-and-white image of some stars, due to a defect in a primary mirror – it then delivered images really dazzling from space.The Time magazine lists the 50 "best" photos taken by Hubble, although they are all extraordinary in their own way.They depend on the interest that we have door to this or that corner of the universe.
NASA has developed a new telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, worth $ 8 billion, will help to get back into the time, almost until the beginning of the universe.The Webb will be able to collect seven times the starlight as a Hubble and observe the universe in lengths. infrared wave, which Hubble can not, reported Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post in February. bach said that the Webb telescope should eventually replace the Hubble, which "still works fabulously, but is long in the tooth".
(With the exception of the title, this story was not published by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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