Images from the Eagle Nebula show the ability of the Hubble Space Telescope to capture images in both visible light (left) and infrared (right). NASA celebrates the successful restart of the telescope payload computer, opening the door to more observations.
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Images from the Eagle Nebula show the ability of the Hubble Space Telescope to capture images in both visible light (left) and infrared (right). NASA celebrates the successful restart of the telescope payload computer, opening the door to more observations.
Nasa
The Hubble Space Telescope is operational again more than a month after shutting down its original payload computer. NASA has said it has successfully switched to its backup computer – and although the process of bringing the system back online is slow, the agency has started to take science instruments out of “safe mode.”
“There were cheers in the control center” Thursday night when it was learned that NASA had succeeded in restore payload computerHubble deputy project manager James Jeletic told NPR.
Hubble will likely resume scientific work this weekend
“There is a great sense of relief,” Jeletic said.
“We thought it would all work, but, you know, you deal with the space business and all kinds of surprises can happen to you. But we had no surprises.”
As for when the telescope returns its first stunning images to Earth since the restart, the wait should be short.
“The first observations will hopefully be made over the weekend,” Jeletic said. Considering the time it takes to receive and process the data, he predicted, “you would probably see the first images come out early next week.”
Troubleshooting a technical problem in orbit
The relief and joy comes more than a month after the space telescope stopped collecting images and other data on June 13 when the payload computer that controls its science instruments suddenly shut down. (The computer that runs the Hubble spacecraft has remained online.)
For weeks, NASA scientists worked on possible solutions to bring the computer back from the payload, but none of those ideas worked.
Initial system testing struggled to isolate the issue – a process complicated by the hundreds of miles between the Hubble team and the computer and other components. But as every system failure persisted, the team came to believe that a single problem could explain such widespread problems: the power control unit, which sends electricity to all the hardware.
To solve the problem, the team studied schematics of the original designs that date back decades.
“We even had people coming out of retirement who were experts in these areas on Hubble to help us out,” Jeletic said.
The successful restart of the system, he added, “has a lot to say for the people who designed the spacecraft 40 years ago.”
Safeguard systems remain in place
Hubble’s science payload is running on its backup computer system, he said, because the team had already configured it to run on secondary units while working on the outage. It chose to stay on the backup system, Jeletic said, to simplify the restart process.
Hubble performs backups of all of its components, part of the original engineers’ plans to deal with such issues. For now, it is a single power control unit. But the Hubble team also believes there is a chance that the Power Unit may simply repair itself over time.
Describing two ways that could happen, Jeletic said the unit might just need to stay cool for a while to let the electricity dissipate. It’s also possible that it will fail due to “circuit drift,” he said, explaining that the circuit may have drifted out of its operational setting – and it could just go back. .
Exotic science relies on a 25 megahertz computer chip
The successful restart is just the latest comeback from Hubble, which was originally slated for just 15 years of service. It was placed in orbit in April 1990 after hitchhiking aboard the space shuttle Discovery.
Hubble’s main on-board computer is an Intel 486 computer with the best speed of 25 megahertz available (and rated for space travel) when astronauts upgraded the system at the turn of the century.
“It has about 2 megabytes of memory,” Jeletic said. “So you can compare that to your last iPhone. It’s very, very primitive by today’s standards of what you wear on your wrist, but it’s more than enough for what we need to do.”
These components, which would be considered old or simply obsolete in today’s computing market, are responsible for sending over 1.5 million observations of nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters to Earth’s surface. And now this work will continue.
“Today, we still only use about 60[%] at 70% of his memory and his ability to do whatever Hubble does, “Jeletic said.
But Hubble now finds itself in a situation that many smartphone users can relate to: While technical support is still available, hardware support has been cut off since NASA completed its mission. final maintenance mission in 2009.
