NASA has fixed Hubble in the same way that you repair your computer

Popular mechanics

In early October, NASA announced that the Hubble Telescope posed a serious problem. One of the telescope's gyroscopes broke down, leaving the satellite with only two gyroscopes able to operate and stabilize. On Monday, however, NASA announced that it had solved the problem by using space-based versions of the same strategies that you could use to repair your computer. That is to say, give a good shot.

Hubble's troublesome gyroscopes are several small rotating cylinders that rotate and stabilize the telescope. Without them, Hubble and similar telescopes could not control what they are watching. They are essential to the operation of the telescope, but as they are mobile, their life is quite short. Defective gyroscopes will kill all NASA space telescopes, with enough time.

In the case of Hubble, these gyroscopes were replaced during a space shuttle mission in 2009. But with the closure of the shuttle program, it is impossible to replace them again. Three of Hubble's six gyroscopes have failed. If one more breaks down, Hubble will be unable to maneuver to full capacity.

This is the reality faced by NASA's Hubble team on October 5th, when one of the three remaining gyroscopes stopped working. The satellite was put in secure mode, suspending its scientific observations while NASA was developing a plan. Their idea was to revive one of the three gyroscopes that had failed before.

The first step of NASA was to follow the advice given by all IT departments around the world: they were trying to turn off and turn on the gyroscope. "This procedure disabled the gyroscope for a second and then restarted it before the wheel spins," says a NASA press release. "The intention was to remove defects that may occur after the gyroscope has been turned off for more than 7.5 years."

Unfortunately, this was not enough to solve the problem. The gyroscope was still giving scrambled data to the NASA team in the field. NASA engineers suspected that a kind of internal blockage was disturbing the gyro sensors. So they went to the second step: kick fast, or at least the high-tech interpretation of NASA.

"On October 18, the Hubble Operations team ordered a series of spacecraft maneuvers in opposite directions to remove any blockage," the press release said. These fast turns seemed to produce enough force to eliminate this presumed blockage, and after repeating the procedure, the emergency gyro seems to work perfectly.

Effectively, this means that Hubble is back to work in normal three-gyroscope mode and if everything continues to work normally, the telescope should soon be able to take incredible images of the cosmos. We are just happy that NASA has run the gyroscope before having to perform the equivalent of space to blow on the cartridge.

<p class = "canvas-atom canvas-text Mb (1.0em) Mb (0) – sm Mt (0.8em) – sm" type = "text" content = "(# You might also like,,)"data-reactid =" 31 ">(# You might also like,,)