Hubble might be done

Tuckerfan · Jul 20, 2021

New pics!

Rebooted Hubble Telescope Wastes No Time, Captures Cool New Pics of Misfit Galaxies

It was looking grim there for a while, but Hubble is back in business after a computer glitch kept the space telescope offline for over a month. With no time to waste, the 31-year-old observatory is already back at work, capturing vivid new images of oddball galaxies.

Unsavory billionaires blasting off into space are making us grouchy, so thank goodness for the Hubble Space Telescope. The storied observatory represents all that’s good about our ventures into space; to date, the telescope has taken more than 1.5 million observations of objects near and far, and its data has been cited in more than 18,000 scientific publications, according to NASA.

But recently it looked as though Hubble’s historic reign may be over, when a computer glitch shut down the show on June 13. The telescope was out of commission for over a month despite NASA’s efforts to bring it back. I feared the worst and began to mentally prepare for doing up an obituary. With hindsight, we can now say that reports of Hubble’s death were greatly exaggerated; NASA’s recovery team fixed the problem with backup hardware, allowing science operations to recommence on July 17 at 1:19 p.m. EDT.

It’s super good news, but needless to say, I was hardly the only person worried.

ARP-MADORE2115-273: a rare interacting galaxy pair.Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, Julianne Dalcanton (UW), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

“I’ll confess to having had a few nervous moments during Hubble’s shutdown, but I also had faith in NASA’s amazing engineers and technicians,” Julianne Dalcanton, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a statement. “Everyone is incredibly grateful, and we’re excited to get back to science!”

Dalcanton is an early beneficiary of Hubble’s resuscitation, as her team is using the space-based telescope to gather images of peculiar galaxies, including an interacting pair and a large spiral galaxy with an extra appendage.

The interacting pair is called ARP-MADORE2115-273, and it’s located 297 million light-years away. The newly released view is Hubble’s first high-resolution image of the system. Scientists thought that ARP-MADORE2115-273 was a ring galaxy caused by a collision, but the new image suggests that “the ongoing interaction between the galaxies is far more complex, leaving behind a rich network of stars and dusty gas,” as NASA explains.

So yeah, Hubble goes back to work, and we’re instantly learning new things.

The large spiral galaxy ARP-MADORE0002-503.Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, Julianne Dalcanton (UW), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Like the Milky Way, ARP-MADORE0002-503 is a spiral galaxy. Unlike the Milky Way, however, this galaxy has three spiral arms instead of the usual two. It’s also a lot bigger than our galaxy, featuring a radius of 163,000 light-years, making it about three times wider than the Milky Way.

Other pending tasks on Hubble’s to-do list include observations of globular clusters in distant galaxies and scans of auroras on Jupiter. After three decades of dutiful service, Hubble continues to act as our watchful eye on the cosmos, and there’s something very comforting about that.
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Tuckerfan · Nov 5, 2021

Hubble back in 'safe mode.'

With Hubble Stuck in Safe Mode, NASA Tinkers With Its Storied Space Telescope

Mission specialists continue to troubleshoot an issue with the Hubble Space Telescope that caused it to enter into a protective safe mode late last month.

Hubble automatically entered into safe mode on October 25 after a batch of synchronization messages got lost. NASA says the space telescope is otherwise fine and that Hubble’s science instruments remain healthy, but normal science operations had to cease as a result of the anomaly. Without these synch messages, Hubble’s instruments can’t accurately respond to data requests and commands. That’s obviously not ideal for a precision instrument that orbits Earth at speeds approaching 17,000 miles per hour (27,400 km/hr).

Mission team members are in full-on troubleshooting mode, as they attempt to source the problem on hardware responsible for commanding Hubble’s instruments, according to a NASA update. In particular, they’ve got their eyes on the Control Unit circuitry, which churns out the synchronization messages and communicates them to Hubble’s instruments.

Team specialists are also on the hunt for effective workarounds. They’ve floated the idea of altering instrument flight software such that it can compensate for the lost synch messages and in the process not have the telescope thrown back into safe mode. Any proposed workaround would be tested on ground simulators to make sure the idea actually works.

NASA has also been tinkering with Hubble to assist with the troubleshooting. On Monday, November 1, NASA turned on Hubble’s Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) instrument. With NICMOS active, the team is able to gather more data, including a potential frequency measure of the glitch. NICMOS was no longer needed once Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 became available, and it’s been inactive for the past 11 years. With NICMOS now switched on, the team has a nonessential instrument to track lost messages—and not at the expense of having to put Hubble’s principal tools at risk. No synch messages have been lost since NICMOS was turned on, according to NASA.

Progress might happen soon, as Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument could begin science observations early next week. NASA will make a decision about this on Sunday after a review of the most recent data. ACS was chosen as the first instrument to come back online because it’s least affected by lost synch messages, but NASA cautions that any lost synch messages between now and early next week could have a bearing on this decision. Specialists are “proceeding cautiously to ensure the safety of the instruments and avoid additional stresses on the hardware,” NASA said. “Therefore, only ACS will be used in this capacity next week.”

Regardless, analysis of the Control Unit will continue, as the team continues to source the cause of the anomaly. And as noted, they’ll continue to ruminate over those potential software changes. Only once the team understands the frequency of the glitch and develops a timeline for the software rollouts can NASA formulate a plan to return all other instruments to science operations.

If precedence means anything, we probably shouldn’t be worried. Hubble is the proverbial cat with nine lives, having returned from safe mode many times before, most recently this past March. All things being equal, Hubble should remain operational for the duration of the 2020s and perhaps even into the 2030s.
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Tuckerfan · Dec 10, 2021

Hello, Dr. Floyd. Please, believe me. This is very difficult for me, I don't have much time.

The Hubble Telescope Is Finally Back After a Long Struggle

The Hubble space telescope is on course to complete 32 years of service following yet another scare that had many believing it may never work again, a report from UniverseToday reveals.

The recovery of operations is a cause for celebration, though it is also the latest reminder that Hubble is composed of decades-old hardware. The question is, how long will it last, and what is NASA doing to extend the iconic telescope's lifespan?

Hubble has been plagued by technical issues in recent years
The latest technical issues began on October 23rd, when NASA reported that the telescope was sending back error codes indicating the loss of a specific synchronization message. That particular message provides timing information for Hubble's instruments, so that it can respond to data requests and commands without error. Multiple losses of synchronization errors led to Hubble being placed in safe mode.

NASA worked hard to restore operations throughout November, and, on Nov. 8th, the space agency announced that it regained partial control of the iconic telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Shortly afterwards, Hubble's most-used instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC-3), was also restored.

Then, on Monday, Dec. 7th, the Hubble team announced that all four active instruments aboard the Hubble were online and that the telescope was fully operational once again. While astronomy enthusiasts can breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate, these recent events sadly indicate that Hubble might be nearing the end of its lifespan.

Back in June, another issue caused by Hubble's NSSC-1 payload computer also ceased operations. The team was able to bring the telescope back online roughly a month later after a "risky" switchover procedure to backup hardware, but the increasing frequency of such issues is a cause for concern. A similar problem also occurred in October, 2018, when one of the telescope's reaction wheels failed to go into safe mode.

Extending an aging telescope's lifetime
It is widely documented that Hubble runs on hardware from the 80s and 90s, meaning that many experts warn the 31-year-old telescope may be nearing the end of operations. Still, according to NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, the Hubble team is essentially patching the telescope's software to help extend its lifespan as much as possible.

One change the Hubble team will make is to install a software update to allow it to continue to run operations even if it experiences a series of lost synchronization messages. This will be implemented as part of a series of software updates aimed at improving the efficiency, and therefore longevity, of the telescope's aging hardware.

NASA is, of course, also expecting to launch its much-hyped James Webb Space Telescope later this month, with the launch tentatively scheduled for Dec. 22. This means that, even if Hubble is close to the end of its illustrious record-breaking mission, the U.S. space agency will at least add another powerful observatory to its arsenal in the very near future.

Though the James Webb Telescope is not a like-for-like successor to Hubble, it will help the global astronomical community to continue to unravel the mysteries of dark matter and extend the search for alien life.
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Tuckerfan · Mar 26, 2022

There's life in the ol' gal yet.

NASA to announce Hubble Space Telescope discovery next week

Officials with the Hubble Space Telescope program have some new science to share on Wednesday (March 30).

A NASA statement promises "one for the record books" and an "exciting new observation" from the nearly 32-year-old telescope. It's tricky to guess what that discovery might be, given that the Hubble Space Telescope's work stretches from exoplanets to galaxies to measuring the expansion of the universe. (That last bit garnered the multiobservatory team a Nobel Prize.)

NASA has offered little other information beyond promising that the "Hubble result not only extends our understanding of the universe, but creates an exciting area of research for Hubble's future work with NASA's newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope."

Webb launched on Dec. 25 and is aligning its instruments and mirrors to get ready for observational work scheduled to begin around June. Hubble is about to celebrate another anniversary of its deployment from space shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990.

Scientists from the Webb telescope team have in recent months highlighted how Hubble's decades of observations are serving as a wayfinder for the newly launched telescope.

Although Webb is billed as a successor to Hubble, NASA expects Hubble to remain operational at least well into the 2020s, officials have said. That said, Hubble suffered an issue in October 2021 that forced its instruments offline for several weeks, but returned to full operations in December. The observatory also recovered from a very serious glitch in July 2021.

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle used to service Hubble every few years, but that work ceased when the space shuttle program retired in 2011. The last servicing mission to Hubble was in 2009.

Webb is not expected to benefit from such visits, as it is much more distant, operating at a stable gravitational point called Lagrange 2, 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

Several of Hubble's latest images have had to do with galaxies. A couple of examples include examining a spiral galaxy that underlies part of the Virgo Cluster (of which our Milky Way is also a part), and imaging the dusty "eye" of another galaxy much like our own.
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NAHTMMM · Mar 27, 2022

They've finally discovered beer on the sun.

Steal Your Face · Mar 28, 2022

NAHTMMM said: ↑

They've finally discovered beer on the sun.
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Yeah, but it's PBR.

Paladin · Mar 28, 2022

Federal Farmer said: ↑

NAHTMMM said: ↑

They've finally discovered beer on the sun.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it's PBR.
Click to expand...

Where's tri-lithium when you need it?

We Are Borg · Mar 30, 2022

Hubble Space Telescope spots the most distant star ever seen

Tuckerfan · May 10, 2023

There's a New Plan to Relocate Hubble Space Telescope and Extend Its Lifespan

Bickendan · May 10, 2023

Plot twist: They're uploading Win11 as the new OS, and NASA will need to install adblocks to get around the interface to download the images Hubble takes...

Tuckerfan · Dec 1, 2023

Glitching Hubble Puts Science Missions on Hold

Tuckerfan · Apr 27, 2024

Hubble Telescope Put Into Dreaded Safe Mode Due to Ongoing Glitch

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