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Hubble Telescope's Main Camera Shuts Down
anthemaniac writes "Space.com is reporting that the aging observatory's primary camera, the ACS, has been in safe mode since the weekend. From the article: 'An initial investigation indicates the camera has stopped functioning, and the input power feed to its Side B electronics package has failed.' The camera has shut down before and been revived."
Space.com is reporting that the aging observatory's primary camera, the ACS, has been in safe mode since the weekend.
No wonder they can't contact it. Safe Mode doesn't support networking by default.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
and choose "Last known good configuration."
Since they have already said that repair missions to the hubble scope are off the agenda, sooner or later its going to die. There are replacements on the way anyhow.
Personally I think they should boost it into higher orbit so it stays safe for future space archeologists. The same bods who will eventually be interested in retreiving the Viking missions, and who knows, if we get fast enough ships, the voyagers.
Truly spoken like an ignorant retard. Or a troll, in which case I'm falling for it. This "POS" is one of the greatest astronomical instrument ever devised, and has yielded enough data for years of study to come. There's a reason why scientist want to keep it around.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/01/18/china.mis sile/index.html
Engineering is the art of compromise.
why waste it in such a fashion. The shuttle is designed to retrieve it. how much could the smithsonian get for having that on display.
That would be a good thing for Nasa to do.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
RTFA: It was restored from safemode on Sunday -.-
They are hoping to switch it back over to the primary power supply and get limited usage until the shuttle gets there.
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
Dear Troll,
The HST Data Archive (HDA) has always been available to the public, albeit after a one-year "proprietary rights" period.
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
by "public data" he means 8mb JPGs with color and false color correction emailed to him at troll@aol.com
It shorted, and burned enough plastic or wiring to trip the overpressure sensor (do wire shorts smell in space?). See this message from the Space Telescope Science Institute. Side A electronics are available which might be able to run a portion of the instrument. This has been expected since the first failure last summer, and "contingency" proposals are available to keep the observatory running using its other instruments (ACS has recently been the most used).
We have a telescope in orbit that's servicable. It seems to me that the big, expensive part of this marvel would be the large optical reflector. Unless someone could point out a reason otherwise, would it not make sense to just keep making camera upgrades to put on the end of this thing? Yes, I realize that I may be oversimplying this procedure, but if it's not feasible to service it in the near future, is there something wrong with tucking it away in a safe orbit until it would become feasible...or clearly determine that the telescope has reached the end of its useful life and then de-orbit it?
Heck, if privatized, manned spaceflight is just around the corner, sell the silly thing to a private entity so they can fix it up and sell operating (viewing) time on it. Richard Branson and his ilk could have a field day with it.
The Hubble is getting old.
I'm pretty sure they were going to stop servicing it.
The question is: Will they come up with a replacement or try to fix the Hubble again?
And would be cost effective to repair it again or has it's time finally come?
~ Mooga
Eh? In case you're actually serious about this, (a) The US demonstrated ASAT capability over 20 years ago, and (b) ASAT capability is completely irrelevant, as such attacks don't deorbit the satellite, but result in tens of thousands of pieces of debris that are dangerous to other satellites.
In any case, casting aspersions on NASA's ability based on Hubble is ridiculous, as it's been by any measure a spectacularly successful instrument, which even 17 years after launch has capabilities not matched by any foreseeable ground-based instruments (no, not even with adaptive optics) or by any planned space instrument.
Since Hubble was orbited using Discovery, I doubt it.
Safe mode. Stopped functioning. Needs to be rebooted to make it work. Anyone for a game of word association?
The Advanced Camera for Surveys wasn't installed until the third servicing mission in 2002. It's been problematic since then. If it can be installed on a spacewalk, it can be replaced on a spacewalk.
Also, the Hubble servicing mission has been approved. Barring some act of God or Congress, Atlantis will conduct this mission on STS-125 in May of 2008. The ACS was not on the itinerary for service, but it might still be possible to add it to the agenda or push back the mission date if need be. On the other hand, it might be possible to work around whatever problem caused the latest shutdown, the third according to Wikipedia.
I should point out the foot dragging was largely spurred on by calls for the retirement of the shuttle as soon as possible (even immediately) and some general hysteria following the Columbia incident (as opposed to the rational re-examination that also took place). There is also the issue of the cost, which is in the range of hundreds of millions and had not been provided for, and a difference of philosophy between O'Keefe (administrator until 2005) and Griffin (current admin). Mission development is fully provided for in 2007, and should be in the 2008 budget, too.
If Hubble was going to roll over and play dead, it should've done so back in mid-2005, before more money had been spent on the servicing mission.
FTA:
In all seriousness, though, it's worth noting that this camera is comparatively new (installed 12 years after launch) and that it's failed more or less on schedule. Too bad NASA doesn't plan on sending a mission until next year. Also worth noting is that it's not the only instrument on the telescope... though it is the one that takes the purty pictures that garner mainstream attention.
The parent is not informative, it is wrong, or at least out of date.
The Space Shuttle will be retired upon completion of the ISS. NASA will be taking steps over the coming years which would prevent almost any extension of the currently planned flight schedule, like reconfiguring launch pads to support the future vehicles, retiring shuttle craft as they complete their scheduled missions, caniballizing said vehicles for parts, and refraining from ordering parts like external tanks and solid rocket boosters which would be required to extend the schedule by even one flight.
The shuttle will cease operations regardless of the status of replacement vehicles. Although many planned technology programs intended to help replace the shuttle with a more reliable and cost effective system were cancelled over the years, NASA is currently pursuing a manned vehicle program, Orion which has not been cancelled.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I am still miffed after reading another story elsewhere about what we pay football coaches versus what we pay the president of the college.
We'll get what we pay for. Maybe the average American feels tougher football games are more important to our society than scientific research.
Most do not want to take the time to study science... but in the end, its the laws of nature ( applied science ) that will determine the temperature of my house, the operation of my car, and whether or not I eat. In short, my whole life is determined by my and other's knowledge of applying science.
Maybe pretty pictures of the stars isn't deemed particulary useful. The pictures are only the frosting. The important thing to me is gaining more and more understanding of materials and physics governing them. Technologies developed are useful for many things, especially medical and agricultural.
I feel that as an intelligent species, it behooves us to understand the universe around us and our place in it. By observing phenomena happening somewhere else, it will help us to intelligently react if it happens to us.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
www.glumbert.com/media/universe Not included in the previous post
Jargon alert for non specialists: ACS = Advanced Camera for Surveys; WFC = Wide Field Camera; HRC = High Resolution Camera; SBC = Solar Blind Channel; CCD = charge coupled device; WFPC2 = Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (an older instrument); STScI = Space Telescope Science Institute; and GSFC = Goddard Space Flight Center.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Here it is: the HST archive. You can download everything that is over a year old; proposers have exclusive rights for one year. Unfortunately, the data are really raw, so they won't be usable without packages like IRAF (PyRAF). Or were you not really making a legitimate point?
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Only Me (A Hubble Tribute)
To the tune of "Only you"
By Joel Gilmore, 2007
Looking at the sky up above
Taking photos with love,
Can you fix me?
Found out only yesterday,
my orbit's soon to decay
Can't you boost me?
Chorus:
All I needed was a manned space flight
All I needed for another night
Since 1993 -
only me.
If I lose one more gyroscope
I don't know if I'll cope,
Send Discovery!
Install Wide Field Camera 3,
Spectrograph, batteries,
My camera's dying!
Chorus:
All I needed was a manned space flight
All I needed for another night
Until James Webb, there'll be -
only ME!
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
ground based systems can't look at a single point in space for a long duration image set
Neither can Hubble. The Hubble Deep Field was pieced together from 10 nights of images. The newer Hubble Ultra Deep Field, from 11 nights.
Pretty much any half-decent-looking astronomical image you see is a combination of multiple exposures. I'm one of the operators of the 2.2-meter (that's slightly smaller than Hubble) telescope on Mauna Kea, and have been teaching myself the process of getting and combining images in different filters/wavelengths. For example, I made this shot of M76 from about a dozen exposures. (Using, incidentally, the same instrument that was used to discover the Kuiper Belt back in 1992.)
Just a data point.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I work at STScI and it sounds like they're going to be able to switch ACS back to the side 1 power supply. Unfortunately, it means that the WFC which is the most used won't be working. A failure of the side 1 supply to WFC is why they had to switch to side 2 this summer.
The good news is that WFPC2 is still working even if it doesn't have the imaging area or sensitivity of ACS. The telescope allocation committee just re-opened applications for next cycle so lots of people are just going to switch their proposals from using ACS to using WFPC2 (myself included). As a side note: anyone can apply for telescope time since its run with taxpayer money. Just go to the site and fill out the form.
The other good news is that the servicing mission is going ahead for early 2008 when they're going to put in WFPC3 which is a bit better than ACS and will have much lower distortions and a great new spectrograph called COS. That'll take HST to the end of its life in 2013. At that point, the next space telescope, JWST, will be launched. In case you're wondering though, JWST will have a much shorter life since it won't be possible to service it.
So yeah, it sucks that ACS smoked itself but it's not the end of the world.