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Hubble Telescope Hit By Mechanical Failure (bbc.com)
The Hubble Space Telescope is operating with only essential functions after it lost one of the gyroscopes needed to point the spacecraft. From a report: The observatory, described as one of the most important scientific instruments ever created, was placed in "safe mode" over the weekend, while scientists try to fix the problem. Hubble had been operating with four of its six gyroscopes when one of them failed on Friday. The telescope was launched in 1990. After the gyro failure at the weekend, controllers tried to switch on a different one, but that was found to be malfunctioning. That leaves Hubble with only two fully functional gyros. At any given time, Hubble needs three of its gyroscopes to work for optimal efficiency.
The Earth is flat. You only need 2 gyros to point oneself in 2D space.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
This could be pretty bad news for NASA if they can't manage to jury rig something. Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, isn't scheduled for launch until 2021. Though I suppose they could try to do another repair mission on the Hubble like they did in '93 and four other times since (the last was 2009), but, that was back before they retired the space shuttle in 2011. Doing another maintenance run on the Hubble is probably beyond the spec/capabilities of the first manned SpaceX launch, currently planned for mid 2019.
It's still early to talk of a rescue mission, but I'm surprised TFA doesn't even mention it. Of course, without the shuttle, and with SpaceX and Boeing unlikely to fly humans until sometime around 2020, It's likely to remain hobbled [wah wah] when the Webb telescope is launched in 2019. So fixing it will depend on the cost/benefit for what Hubble can do compared to Webb.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Hubble Telescope Hit By Mechanical Failure
That's not fair... that's not fair at all. There was time now. There was... was all the time I needed. That's not fair! That's not fai-ai-airrrr!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Iirr the gyroscopes all have issues with their gyroscopes' bearings, that were not discovered in earth-based duration tests.
Cosmic rays erode the surface of the metal ball bearings, causing them to fail eventually way before their predicted life span.
They changed to ceramic bearings since which solved the problem.
Source: some youtube vid i saw a while ago.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
... and hurry.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Do we really need Hubble that badly anymore?
Apparently adaptive optics technology is allowing ground-based telescopes to surpass Hubble's capability.
https://www.airspacemag.com/sp...
Rather than firing up an expensive space mission (I remember each shuttle mission was $500M), would it genuinely be better to just take that money and build or retrofit a ground-based telescope with adaptive optics? A telescope that you could easily maintain thereafter?
This doesn't help with wavelengths of light that don't go through Earth's atmosphere, but that's not what Hubble does. Seems like we could do without Hubble nowadays.
--PeterM
"Hubble had been operating with four of its six gyroscopes"
Gyroscope count: 4
"...when one of them failed on Friday."
4 - 1 = 3
Gyroscope count: 3
"After the gyro failure at the weekend, controllers tried to switch on a different one..."
3 + 1 = 4
Gyroscope count: 4
"...but that was found to be malfunctioning."
4 - 1 = 3
Gyroscope count: 3
"That leaves Hubble with only two fully functional gyros.'
But the count is 3, isn't it?
"At any given time, Hubble needs three of its gyroscopes to work for optimal efficiency."
Then we should be good to go.
What am I missing?
>> Hubble had been operating with four of its six gyroscopes when one of them failed on Friday
So 4 -1 = 3.
>> After the gyro failure at the weekend, controllers tried to switch on a different one,
So 3 + 1 = 4
>> but that was found to be malfunctioning.
So 4 -1 = 3
>> That leaves Hubble with only two fully functional gyros.
3 != 2
I found this from thirteen years ago:
The aliens can move their mother ship up from Pluto to a position behind the moon while we aren't looking.
Have gnu, will travel.
Kind of like you have 4 dicks in your mouth. ...
Thanks for that imagery. My safe word is now "gyroscope".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Laughing my ass off!
make up a rocket backpack for it that can latch onto it.
maneuver it to the ISS where it can be grabbed by the arm.
send a bunch of stuff up to the ISS for a complete refurb so it can last longer than waiting out the james web launch in 20 whenever.
no reason why the ISS can't be used as a repair depot.
I hope they rebooted it in Safe Mode With Networking. Otherwise we're screwed.
We should use robots. But we waste our budget putting men into the space station.
And for the funds wasted on the Shuttle, there could be dozens of space telescopes. Well a few anyway.
And the Webb would already be launched.
Instead of replacing the internal gyros could a bolt on solution be developed? That might be more serviceable by robotics than the expense and risk of a manned mission.
Need a ba330 ( or even a BA Sundancer ) with a tug to push it around. That could be used to move around leo, esp from ISS to another private space station.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And that's why you should never spend our lunch break reading in a heavily shielded bank vault. The universe is always on the look out for new and exciting ways to mess with you!
I always wondered though - did the guy really not have a second pair of glasses? Or know where the optometrist was located to find another pair that was at least adequate enough? I suppose really the over-dramatic response was likely shock as the reality of the situation finally found a chink in his carefully constructed emotional armor. Or just dramatic license, but one must never say such things.
You're overthinking it. That's usually my job, sir!
Obviously that's a solution a smart, bookish fellow would have figured out, but perhaps that was the point of letting us see through his eyes, to understand he's so profoundly blind without his glasses, and even if he had a spare pair of glasses in his house, he might have trouble finding his way home to retrieve them. Then there's the fact that likely the ruins of his house would have been sitting on top of that spare pair, making them difficult to retrieve assuming he could find his way home, and manage to clear the wreckage of his house off them. Given the fragility of the pair he was wearing, do you really think they'd have survived?
This is the Twilight Zone, recall, and I believe the whole point of the episode was to fuck with him. In that case, in the Burgess Meredith's character versus the world, the fight was fixed before they started filming. His character should be consoled though, with how much amusement we got contemplating his misery, and then seeing all the pop-cultural references to it, all the parodies, etc. This actually gives me an idea for Halloween, though.
To beat the Twilight Zone in this fight, that character would have had to team up with another character Meredith played in the series, in "The Printer's Devil," and type out a headline on the machine reading something like, "Last Man On Earth Conveniently Finds Indestructible Spare Pair of Glasses After Nuclear Holocaust and Lives Happily Ever After."
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Hey, I saw the size of those shards - more than enough to see through to navigate the city. Or read a book, though the eye strain would be hideous.
And please sir - one must never acknowledge the existence of "authors" or other such active gods in the universe, nor the constraints of "episode" they impose, lest the power of the "plot device" render all further discussion moot.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This place will sort it out:
https://www.google.com.au/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x6b12bab50779377d%3A0x9131c64416910825!2m22!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i20!16m16!1b1!2m2!1m1!1e1!2m2!1m1!1e3!2m2!1m1!1e5!2m2!1m1!1e4!2m2!1m1!1e6!3m1!7e115!4s%2Fmaps%2Fplace%2Fgyros%2Bfix%2F%40-33.8691415%2C151.1190798%2C3a%2C75y%2C342.77h%2C90t%2Fdata%3D*213m4*211e1*213m2*211sjyudiWsSXP_f_fGrgZrK-A*212e0*214m2*213m1*211s0x6b12bab50779377d%3A0x9131c64416910825!5sgyros%20fix%20-%20Google%20Search&imagekey=!1e2!2sjyudiWsSXP_f_fGrgZrK-A&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiG_5bBy_jdAhWJZt4KHQdnCN4Qpx8wD3oECAsQDg
They sure don't make them space telescopes like they used to.
What about right to repair?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
This piece of marvel been in orbit since the 1990s and amazing it lasted this long. But as with any equipment it will wear out. Without the shuttles it will be hard to perform any kind of major mechanical repairs so they may have to bite the bullet and plan on a replacement soon.