NASA’s Hubble Telescope operations interrupted by voltage levels

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A team of experts will attempt to switch the space telescope to backup hardware in an attempt to restore operations.

WASHINGTON, DC, United States – Editor’s Note: The video above is from May 2020.

A month after NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shut down due to a problem with its payload computer, experts finally have answers on what was wrong.

According to the space agency, the power control unit, which ensures a constant flow of voltage to the payload’s computer hardware, is behind the heist.

“The team’s analysis suggests that either the voltage level of the regulator is outside acceptable levels (thus triggering the secondary protection circuit), or the secondary protection circuit has degraded over time and is stuck in. this state of inhibition, “wrote NASA.

No ground command was able to reset the power control unit, which means that while the telescope and its scientific instruments are healthy, they are also unusable at the moment.

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The Hubble team will now switch the 31-year-old telescope to its backup hardware. According to a statement, the exploit will be attempted on July 15 and will take several days before the observatory can resume normal activities.

“It’s a pretty complicated approach because there are components on the spacecraft that are not tied to the payload computer that also need to be switched to their backup items,” Hubble Systems anomaly response manager Nzinga Tull said. “So we got ready, looked at our processes and procedures, making sure it was all in order. “

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A similar change was made in 2008 when NASA declared that a Command Unit / Science Data Formatter module had failed. The following year, Hubble had its entire scientific instrumentation and data processing control unit replaced during a maintenance mission.

Over the years, the Hubble Telescope has made over 1.5 million observations of the universe and generated over 18,000 scientific papers.

“[Hubble] contributed to some of the most important discoveries in our cosmos, including the accelerating expansion of the universe, the evolution of galaxies over time, and the first atmospheric studies of planets beyond our solar system ” , wrote NASA.

You can read more about Exploring Hubble here.

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