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NASA’s beloved Hubble Space Telescope is able to re-capture the sky after overcoming a hardware glitch that has plagued it for over a month.
Its on-board payload computer, which controls its instruments, mysteriously froze, forcing the main computer to put the observatory’s sensors into orbit in inactive safe mode. Using redundant components, the US space agency was finally able to bring Hubble back online.
“NASA successfully switched to backup hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope, including powering up the backup payload computer on July 15,” she said in a statement today. hui.
“The change was made to compensate for an issue with the original payload computer that occurred on June 13 when the computer shut down, suspending scientific data collection.”
Engineers believed that a radiation damaged memory module caused the computer to crash. Switching to backup memory modules, however, didn’t fix Hubble, making it unnecessary.
Then the team investigated other parts of the computer system and tried to use a spare computer. Unfortunately, Hubble was still unable to read and write to and from memory, preventing it from functioning normally.
Some began to fear that the aging telescope was beyond repair. Mission control carried out a formal review of all the processes affecting the switchover to the emergency payload computer. NASA then thought that a shady power control unit (PCU) could be to blame. This part is supposed to maintain the voltage supply to the payload computer, and if it does not do its job properly, the computer will not work.
And so, after switching to a backup PCU, the telescope’s systems were able to start up, allowing the telescope to continue its scientific work. “The switch included bringing the back-up Power Control Unit (PCU) and the back-up Scientific Data Formatting / Control Unit (CU / SDF) on the other side of the unit online. Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH), ”explained NASA. .
Software has also been downloaded to the machine to put it back into service. The register asked the space agency for more details on the failure.
It will take about a day for the old scope to start taking data and capturing images of beautiful cosmic objects again.
“The Hubble team is now monitoring the hardware to make sure everything is working properly. The team also initiated the process of recovering scientific instruments out of their safe mode configuration, ”NASA concluded.
“This activity is expected to take more than a day as the team performs various procedures and ensures that the instruments are at stable temperatures. The team will then perform an initial calibration of the instruments before resuming normal scientific operations.” ®
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