The Hubble Space Telescope goes into safe mode due to a failed gyroscope; Plan B pending

The 28-year-old Hubble Space Telescope is temporarily out of service due to the failure of one of its gyroscopic pointing devices, but scientists say they are working on Plan B.

Today, NASA has confirmed reports that Hubble scientists, such as Deputy Director of the Mission Rachel Osten, have been through the weekend: one of three active telescope gyroscopes failed on Friday. prevented the telescope from pointing astronomical targets for long periods.

NASA stated that Hubble's instruments were still fully operational and that the mission managers were working on solving the gyroscope problem:

"Built with multiple redundancies, Hubble installed six new gyroscopes during maintenance mission 4 in 2009. Hubble typically uses three gyroscopes at a time for maximum efficiency, but can continue to make scientific observations with one.

"The failed gyroscope had end-of-life behavior for about a year and its failure was not surprising; two other gyroscopes of the same type had already failed. The other three gyroscopes available are technically improved and their operational life should be considerably longer. "

Only two of these improved gyroscopes are currently operating. The third did not reach the required level for operations, said NASA. Experts at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute are currently analyzing the situation and testing to see if the third gyro can be recovered.

If it can not be recovered, Hubble will go into a gyroscope mode and keep the second gyroscope in reserve. "While the reduced gyro mode offers reduced sky coverage at any time, the impact on global science capabilities is relatively limited," NASA said.

The news was a shock to fans of the venerable space telescope, which sent stunning images and data to solve cosmic enigmas ranging from planetary origins to the era of the universe. More recently, the telescope has helped scientists confirm the evidence of the first detection of a moon circling an exoplanet.

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Since the withdrawal of the shuttle fleet in 2011, it was no longer possible to send a repair team. The telescope was self-sufficient, but so far scientists and engineers on the team have been able to bypass maintenance issues.

Osten said he was confident that this would also be the case this time around. Here's how she presented the prognosis in a series of tweets:

Astronomers hoped that Hubble would continue to operate long enough to cover the transition to NASA's next-generation James Webb space telescope. As recently as last year, the launch of Webb was scheduled for 2018, but a series of setbacks and mistakes in engineering delayed takeoff until 2021 at the earliest.

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