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Hubble Space Telescope Goes Into Safe Mode
Generic Specialist writes "There is an article on the BBC web-site reporting that the Hubble Space Telescope has finally shut itself down due to the failure of a fourth gyroscope. For some time it has been running on the minimum three out of its six gyroscopes, and on Saturday the failure of another one sent the telesope into its safe mode. We'll have to wait until after the next servicing mission, due next month, before any more science can be done.
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Gyro-99FX3dW00 caused a general protection fault in MSHBLSAT.dll. It may be possible to continue operating normally. Press enter to return to MS-Space and wait for your telescope to recover, or press ctrl-alt-del to send it spiraling down to earth in a heaping flaming mass.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
Assuming it went into deep safemode, the scope is fine. The aperature door will close and the scope will keep position in space. Safe mode is something Hubble's controllers understand very well...
Check out Eric Chaisson's The Hubble Wars for a good description of just how FUBARed the Hubble really is. Among the interesting points: several of the initial gyros on the scope were engineering test models that already had tens of millions of hours of use. A number failed before the last repair mission: they were only 1 gyro away from safe then.
Chaisson (ex-Space Telescope Science Institute high-muckity-muck) was more than a bit critical of the entire design process. Even beyond the the well-known mirror and solar panel problems, the number of design flaws and construction problems were amazing. For example, while it waited for launch nobody could find the documentation that stated that the secondary mirror had ever been installed. They had to tip the scope and build a $BIGNUM "diving board" so someone could climb into the scope and look.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
From the following comments on NASA's mission site, it sounds like the gyros are just too new and different:
:-)
"Why aren't the gyros working?
The Hubble team believes they understand the cause of the failures, although they cannot be certain until the gyros are returned from space and taken apart. Based on nearly one and a half years of intensive chemical, mechanical and electrical investigations, the team believes that the thin wires are being corroded by the fluid in which they are immersed and ultimately this corrosion causes them to break. The fluid is very thick (about the thickness of 10W-30 motor oil), and in order to force this fluid into its float cavity, pressured air was used. The team believes that eventually, oxygen in the air interacted with the fluid to create a small amount of corrosive material and the wires were partially eaten away. Sometimes the wires were strong enough to carry electricity and some-times they were not and they broke. Pressurized nitrogen is now used instead of pressurized air. Using pressurized nitrogen eliminates the introduction of oxygen into this fluid."
Sounds like a much more forgivable error than confusing pounds with Newtons
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"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
I also worked on Servicing Mission 3B, which is supposed to fix the NICMOS Cryo cooler, and add some additional hardware. NICMOS is an infared camera, good for seeing through dust clouds and whatnot. Who knows when that mission is going up now.