NASA is working quickly to fix the Hubble Space Telescope after an issue with
a 1980s-era computer on board caused the famous orbiting observatory to
temporarily shut down.
The Hubble Space Telescope, which in 2020 marked its 30th year in orbit,
halted operations on Sunday (June 13) just after 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) after
problems arose with one of the telescope's computers from the 1980s. The
Hubble operations team suspects that the trouble could be due to a degrading
memory module, according to a NASA statement. The team is hard at work
trying to correct the issue, switching to one of the telescope's several
backup modules.
"Assuming that this problem is corrected via one of the many options
available to the operations team, Hubble is expected to continue yielding
amazing discoveries into the late 2020s or beyond," the operations team at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland told Space.com in an email.
However, "there is no definitive timeline yet as to when this will be
completed, tested and brought back to operational status," they added.
On Sunday, the telescope's main computer stopped receiving signals from the
payload computer and sent an error message to the ground system back on Earth,
which alerted the operations team that something was wrong, the team said.
"Analysis indicates the error is likely due to a degraded memory problem.
Memory can degrade over time due to years of exposure to radiation in space.
Issues like this are expected, which is why there are backup memory modules
on the spacecraft," they added.
The computer that stopped working on Sunday is a payload computer that
controls the observatory's science instruments as part of the telescope's
Science Instrument Control and Data Handling module. The module was last
replaced during the last astronaut servicing mission to the observatory in
2009. The payload computer is a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1)
system that was built in the 1980s.
"The payload computer is from the 1980s, which is when Hubble was designed
and built. Like all spacecraft hardware, the harsh environment of space can
take its toll on electronics. That is why there are backup memory modules
and a backup payload computer onboard the spacecraft that we can switch to
if needed," the operations team members wrote in the email..
After the telescope shut down on Sunday, Hubble's main computer then
automatically put all of its instruments into safe mode and, on Monday (June
14), team members at NASA Goddard restarted the payload computer that caused
the shutdown. However, after the restart, the computer ran into the same
problems that caused the initial shutdown.
The operations team is "currently in the process of switching memory modules
onboard the spacecraft," the team said. Once this process is complete and
the craft has been thoroughly tested, it will resume normal
operations.
This is not the first time that Hubble has run into problems that needed
fixing. Early in the telescope's lifetime, scientists found an error with
the observatory's pointing-control system and issues with the shape of its
primary mirror.
The first servicing mission was launched to work on the telescope in 1993,
and missions to Hubble continued to launch throughout NASA's space shuttle
program. On these missions, astronauts worked on many issues, including
replacing batteries and the gyroscopes that allowed Hubble to point steadily
at far-away spots in the cosmos.
Hubble has overcome problems more recently as well. This past March, for
example, the telescope went into a protective "safe mode" after suffering an
apparent software glitch but bounced back a few days later.
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