The Hubble Space Telescope continues to bounce again from its newest glitch.
In late October, the well-known space observatory suffered an issue with the synchronization of its inside messaging, inflicting all 5 of its fundamental scientific devices to go into a protective “safe mode.”
Hubble crew members managed to carry one instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), back online on Nov. 7. And they simply scored one other success, recovering the observatory’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on Sunday (Nov. 21), NASA officers wrote in an replace Monday (Nov. 22). The WFC3 is scheduled to renew science observations on Tuesday (Nov. 23), company officers added.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
The Hubble crew recovered the ACS and WFC3 with out making important modifications to their parameters. But engineers have been devising and testing potential modifications as they’ve labored to carry the devices again, whereas investigating the foundation reason behind the synchronization concern as effectively.
“These changes would allow the instruments to handle several missed synchronization messages while continuing to operate normally if they occur in the future,” NASA officers wrote in Monday’s update.
“These changes will first be applied to another instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, to further protect its sensitive far-ultraviolet detector,” they added. “It will take the team several weeks to complete the testing and upload the changes to the spacecraft.”
The WFC3 is Hubble’s most closely used instrument, representing greater than one-third of its observing time, NASA officers stated. The WFC3 was put in by spacewalking astronauts in 2009, over the past of 5 servicing missions to Hubble.
Those missions repaired, maintained and upgraded the telescope, which launched to Earth orbit in April 1990. Such consideration explains how Hubble has remained so lively and productive for greater than 30 years.
Still, the scope has begun to point out some indicators of its superior age just lately. For instance, the complete observatory went offline for greater than a month this summer time after struggling a glitch with its main payload computer. The Hubble crew finally fastened that downside by switching to backup {hardware}.
Hubble’s 5 fundamental science devices immediately are the ACS, WFC3, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. The telescope’s tremendous steerage sensors can gather scientific knowledge as effectively.
Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a ebook in regards to the seek for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
