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The Hubble Space Telescope is old. It is fast approaching its 31st anniversary of launching its mission to study the cosmos, and although 31 years may not seem that long, for a machine orbiting the Earth – and enduring whatever comes with exposure to it. ‘space – it is very long lasting. It worked well for a very long time, sending back incredible images and other sightings of structures in space, but it’s not going to last forever, and this week it has shown its age.
On March 7, Hubble unexpectedly closed its scientific observations. Automated systems that monitor the health of the spacecraft triggered the switch, putting the telescope into “safe mode” due to what is described as “a software error in the spacecraft’s main computer. spatial ”. Sadly, that was just the start of the quirk Hubble managers have had to deal with over the past week.
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As NASA explains in a new blog post, the error occurred around 4:00 a.m. EST. When the Hubble team checked into the telescope to see what was going on, they discovered that something was wrong with a recent update to the spacecraft’s software. The change was supposed to help the telescope stay stable even though one of its gyroscopes isn’t what it used to be. “[The Hubble team] determined that the enhancement did not have permission to write to a specific location in computer memory, which caused an issue with the main flight computer and then caused the spacecraft to enter in safe mode, ”says NASA.
NASA says it is already working on a fix for the software issue and will roll back any changes it has made in the meantime so the telescope can get back to work. However, when the team carefully examined the spacecraft’s systems, they spotted another problem: Hubble’s self-closing door had remained open. The door is designed to close if the telescope accidentally points at the Sun, as this could damage or destroy some of its most sensitive parts. The team confirmed that the controls and power were reaching the door motor, but nothing was happening. Fortunately, a back-up engine is installed for such a failure, and NASA will now use the back-up engine instead of the main engine.
Phew! So that’s it, right? Unfortunately no. As NASA was preparing to put the telescope back into working mode, an “unexpected error” in the wide-field camera 3 appeared. NASA isn’t revealing many details about it, but says it will suspend use of this instrument until it can figure out what’s wrong.
NASA really, really wants Hubble to live on for many years to come, and to be honest the agency really needs it to keep working. With the incredible delays and cost overruns of the James Webb Space Telescope (thanks to the repeated failures and incompetence of entrepreneur Northrop Grumman), NASA is hugely dependent on Hubble. Hope any issues that arise can be resolved.
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Mike Wehner has been reporting on technology and video games for the past decade, covering the latest news and trends in VR, wearable devices, smartphones, and future technologies. Most recently, Mike served as a technical writer for The Daily Dot and has been featured on USA Today, Time.com, and countless other websites and print. His love of reporting comes right after his gambling addiction.
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