NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Is Back In Business

Matt_dk writes "Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a 'perfect 10 both for performance and beauty.' (Meanwhile, the slowly declining Mars Phoenix Lander has now entered safe mode, according to reader CraftyJack.)

Comments

Lander, not Rover

[Ertman]

It's the Mars Lander (Phoenix), not the Mars Rover, that is going into standby.

Re:Rover?

[EagleRock]

Lots of confusion...but yes, Spirit and Opportunity are still going strong. It's the Mars Lander Phoenix that's entering safe mode due to failing electronics and deteriorating climate.

Re:Still blurry

[Chaos Incarnate]

It's unfocused because it's not a true visible-light image, and because it's assembled from three images taken over two days. Drift happens.

Re:Let's hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken from a comment on
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/30/hubble-telescope-back-on-the-air/

# Dan Fischer Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 10:09 am

Seems youâ(TM)ve missed the new bad news for Hubble, namely trouble with the ground spare that is to go up with the shuttle - this mission is now in danger. Todays NASA telecon (at 21:00 UTC) will be interesting â¦

zzzz

[apodyopsis]

The lander may be shutting down, but its work remembering that its done its job and exceeded 2.5 times its planned life span.

If everything I designed lasted 2.5 times its product life I would be happy.

Re:zzzz

[EagleRock]

I don't know if the Phoenix is past its expect life yet. I thought the project was expected to go until the end of the year. It is the Mars Rovers that have gone way past their expected life, as they landed back in 2004.

Re:zzzz

[tgd]

Its 2.5 times past its expected life.

The rovers are like cockroaches, nothing will kill them. They're closer to 20x.

Re:zzzz

[CheshireCatCO]

To be fair, the 90 days wasn't really a planned lifespan, that was the prime mission that they needed to finish to be a "success". I suspect that the reason for this is partly funding: NASA likes to fund projects in increments in case something does go wrong. (They don't write a lot of software until the spacecraft is successfully launched, for example.) Plus, but low-balling the life expectancy, they can amaze everyone with what a great bargain the mission is when it outlives it.

I don't think anyone really expected the Phoenix lander to die at around 90 days in as much as almost all missions that are successful in any reasonable sense (in other words, don't blow up on launch, miss Mars, or whatever) outlive their nominal missions by quite a bit. Look at Voyager, Pioneer, Galileo, or Cassini.

Re:zzzz

[dotancohen]

Its 2.5 times past its expected life.

The rovers are like cockroaches, nothing will kill them. They're closer to 20x.

Phoenix is at the end of its expected life of three to four months, which differs from it's planned primary mission lifespan of only 90 days. Note that not all the ovens have been used during the primary mission, as the craft was expected to last longer.

The rovers also had only 90 day primary missions. They are now 5 years past that, just about x20 that you mention.

Re:Funding to the right place?

[CheshireCatCO]

Well, let's think about that, shall we? HST's total cost was about $1.5 billion when it was launched in 1990. (If that figure is 1990 dollars, it's nearly $2.5 billion now.) Being generous, we can figure a shuttle repair mission is around $0.5 billion, so four servicing missions are worth about $2 billion, comparable to the cost of a new Hubble. James Webb ST, by comparison, is estimated to cost $4.5 billion over its lifetime, so you'd get half of a new 'scope for the cost of keeping the old one working.

As with most things, wearing out what you have is more economical than buying a new one (no matter what advertisers want us to think).

On the other hand, if you really want new telescopes, you'd be best-served to not play them off of each other. This isn't a zero sum game and NASA's budget is a trifle compared to other Federal agencies. Rather than denigrated HST, why not seek them money from DoD research projects, for instance?

Re:how f*cking cool is that picture ?

[Chris Tucker]

Ollabelle, take a look here for some larger images, including a TIFF which should be scalable to your desktop size.