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Hubble Repairs Declared "Complete Success"
Matt G writes "The Hubble Telescope's brain transplant seems to have been a perfect succss - British-born Michael Foale and Swiss Claude Nicollier carried out the delicate operation of installing a new computer as they flew over Australia at an altitude of about 600km (360 miles) on Thursday.
The full story is posted at The BBC News site here. "
Does anybody know what operating system (if any) runs the new 'brain' ? Is it VxWorks like pathfinder, or maybe just a very thin blanket over the hardware (just enough to get C code working or something) ?
Actually, why was it needed to upgrade the cpus? I mean, I thought hubble's cpu doesn't do more than controlling movements and handling communication protocols so it can send pictures. The new 'brain' will be 20 times faster, but what's the point? Does the telescope perform calculations on-site ? Just wondering.
The Hubble Repair mission should remind us of what, sadly, has been somewhat forgotten as of late:
These guys know their stuff.
When I sysadmin a machine I'm standing next to...I'm standing on something. I'm not floating in nothingness, hoping my toolkits don't float away into the emptiness of space, trying not to bend a couple hundred gold pins while wearing massive mittens and a spacesuit that I have to continually check for tears.
I also don't generally do it for eight hours straight without so much as a water break.
Similarly, when I'm admining a system remotely, I'm not piggybacking on top of a defense network that I can lose access to at any moment, nor am I trying to fit modern computational systems into a space-hardened antiquated piece of hardware. These are some crazy skilled coders, and they deserve much more respect than the budget-forced unit conversion fiasco implied. (We should be ashamed for the reaction! These )
I'm proud of NASA, and I'm proud of the engineer-athlete-scientists who made the Hubble space telescope possible. Thank you. Your work is appreciated.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I would like to be the first to congratulate the people at NASA for doing a fine, fine job.
The hubble telescope is a big focus for the public's attention. With the recent, uhm, mistakes at NASA, I'm sure that alot of managers were sweating about the PR disaster if this would have gone anything but perfectly.
I can see the headlines now:
"NASA fails again!"
"Hubble goes back to sleep"
"Public faith in NASA shaken"
"NASA's funding cut for continued blunders"
"NASA shuts down for restructure"
20 years later
"Anybody remember when we went to the moon?"
Perhaps I'm being a tad melodramatic here, but who else had that queasy feeling that hubble wasn't going to go back online.. ever?
Once again, congrats to all involved, and good luck in all future endeavours.
Rami James
Israel
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rJames.org - illustration
When originally planned in 1979, the Large Space Telescope program called for return to Earth, refurbishment, and relaunch every 5 years, with on-orbit servicing every 2.5 years. Hardware lifetime and reliability requirements were based on that 2.5-year interval between servicing missions. In 1985, contamination and structural loading concerns associated with return to Earth aboard the shuttle eliminated the concept of ground return from the program. NASA decided that on-orbit servicing might be adequate to maintain HST for its 15- year design life. A three year cycle of on-orbit servicing was adopted. The two HST servicing missions in December 1993 and February 1997 were enormous successes. Future servicing missions are tentatively planned for mid-1999 and mid-2002. Contingency flights could still be added to the shuttle manifest to perform specific tasks that cannot wait for the next regularly scheduled servicing mission (and/or required tasks that were not completed on a given servicing mission).
British-born Michael Foale and Swiss Claude Nicollier carried out the delicate operation of installing a new computer as they flew over Australia at an altitude of about 600km (360 miles) on Thursday.
:->
I thought AIR was required to fly!
Orbited is the right word - nothing ruins a good science story than bad reporting. Some of these science writers need to learn how to pay attention to detail...
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A man who wants nothing is invincible
And does anyone know what kind of code they run? C? Assembler?
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Anonymous Coward
Notice how the media's not making a big deal out of this. I suppose you could argue that successes just don't sell as many newspapers as failures. I think, however, that the mass media likes to manufacture issues by hyping up failures like the Mars mission and then making another story out of the public stir they create. Think about it; "NASA Mars Probe Lost" is just one story, but "Second NASA Failure This Year Causes Public Doubt About Future of Space Agency" can be a snowballing event -- shorts, 'talkback' segments, polls, comments from pundits, etc.
After all, when you're on 24 hours a day, you can't be expected to fill the time by just reporting what really happened when, where and why. That'd require too much actual reporting.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Now that the HST is back online, perhaps NASA might use it to examine the recent failed probe. I hope SOMEONE has thought to at least consider using it to look for the lost probe. If nothing else to see if it was destroyed on impact. I know it is normally used for deep space observing, but hey, I know I for one am at least curious as to the condition of the failed probe.
----- "A people that would sacrifice rights and freedom for a bit of safety deserve neither freedom nor safety."
If you privatize NASA, technological and procedural breakthrough's will all be constrained under patent and licensing constraints that will ultimately hinder progress.
For NASA to *cooperate* with private firms is good, but NASA must remain ultimately free of market constraints'
**>>BELCH
Good for NASA! Now they need to release a few pictures to the media to convince the world that their streak of bad luck is over.
I'm just glad I don't need to do a spacewalk to upgrade the machines I admin!
Congratulations to the team members for accomplishing this difficult mission so perfectly!
We Swiss people of course are proud of Claude Nicollier beeing part of the team.
The hubbles computer runs off a 486 Intel CPU. I am aware that the CPU had to meet certian standards like radiation shielding and emp resistant. But aren't there better CPU's out there that meet those standards? It seems to me that NASA (which can spend billions on failed mars missions) might have the money to pay for a better type of CPU (should one exist).
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
More wallpaper for me!
Seriously, even if you don't appreciate the scientific level of what NASA is doing. You can get some really awsome images from them. Check out NASA's awsome collection of images, which have aver generous copying policy.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
Admittedly, if I was using it on my desktop, I'd like to be able to do other stuff at the same time; for a dedicated system, I'd rather have it be simple and capable of doing its job... There's just less to go wrong that way...
how does NASA spell success after two complete failures with the mars probes?
The Hubble team is an entirely separate team from the Mars probes. One team had a success. Two Mars teams had failures.
Anyway it's not like they haven't messed up on the hubble project before.
True dat. But the embarrassment over the Hubble optics could have been handled much better; they dug their own grave there.
We need to hurry up and privatize NASA befor ethey thow away any more tax dollars.
So what business, exactly, is going to spend money on a Mars probe? Just asking.
The MPL mission was about as privatized as a government program gets: the whole probe was designed and built by outside contractors to a NASA spec. Really, this is the way things should be done. MPL was a failure within aceptable risk. MCO was a horrible avoidable failure, but it's possible that the govt-contractor relationship was partly to blame. This isn't easy.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Yeah, I mean, two failures in a year? It's not like you have to be a rocket scientist to run something like NASA...
... fall over.
There's a reason for that phrase, BTW.
Cheers to NASA for having the skill to take into account as much as they do and still come out with a comparatively very high success rate. I'm reasonably secure in the notion that, granted all of their money and all of their experimental data, I could probably get a rocket to
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Now that Hubble is repaired and according to earlier comments can see near the beginning or first "light", what do we expect Hubble to "see"? Is there an "edge" or "limit" to the extent that Hubble can "see" ... whether x-ray or infared or visible spectrum ... what to see ... is this the first "light"? How about a topic on "extended" Hubble for some comments on how far can we see?
CGurganus