The Hubble Space Telescope has remained in safe mode because October 23, with all of the science instruments offline and not available for observations. However, engineers have actually now had the ability to bring one instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), back online, and have actually rebooted its science observations. NASA stated engineers are still investigating the concern as the other 4 instruments stay offline.
The underlying cause appears to be a “synchronization mistake” which implies the instruments might not sync up to collect data correctly. An earlier upgrade from NASA stated the root cause seemed a timing issue in the command flow. The Hubble group has remained positive throughout this latest problem that the instruments are all still in excellent health, and the healing of the ACS is strengthen for their continued work on the problem.
Safe mode is developed to keep the telescope stable and allow it to remain powered via its photovoltaic panels while the engineering group resolves the technical problems.
Hubble has actually gone through a series of technical problems just recently. In June of this year, a malfunctioning main computer required operators to switch to a backup copy, causing 5 weeks of downtime. In March 2021, an issue with a software application update took the spacecraft offline for a couple of days. This might be par for the course for the aging observatory.
Astronaut Mike Good works on repairing the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph during the final Hubble maintenance objective in May 2009. Routine upgrades have kept the telescope geared up with state-of-the-art instruments, which have actually offered astronomers increasingly better views of the cosmos. Credits: NASA
Hubble has been in area since 1990 and has reinvented our understanding of the universes. With the 5 servicing missions by Space Shuttle astronauts to repair and replace systems on the telescope– consisting of all five of the primary instruments– the observatory has generally been completely upgraded considering that it released. The last maintenance mission was in 2009, and Hubbles age is ending up being evident.
NASA said that over the past week, the objective group has continued examining the origin of the synchronization problems and has seen no additional problems. The group will continue looking into possible short-term solutions today and develop quotes for application. The team will talk about returning the other instruments to functional status and resuming their science observations as soon as this takes place.
You can see the most current Hubble status reports here.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has actually been in safe mode given that October 23, with all of the science instruments unavailable and offline for observations. Engineers have now been able to bring one instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), back online, and have actually restarted its science observations. The Hubble group has remained positive throughout this latest glitch that the instruments are all still in excellent health, and the healing of the ACS is strengthen for their continued work on the problem.
Once this happens, the group will discuss returning the other instruments to functional status and resuming their science observations.
