![]() Mayall 4-meter Telescope on Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is installed on the Nicholas U. If it turns out that a repair mission is needed, it would require a space craft designed with the capability for astronauts to leave that craft in mobile space suits to access the electronics controlling the Hubble. However, with the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, a traditional repair mission is not possible. The Hubble Space Telescope hasn’t always functioned flawlessly indeed NASA sent the Space Shuttle up to service it five times, most recently in 2009. That greatly simplifies the engineers’ efforts. By way of contrast, the Hubble Space Telescope orbits only about 300 miles above the Earth. Voyager 2 is currently so distant (11.5 billion miles, or 18.5 billion kilometers) that it takes 34 hours for a command to reach the craft and a response to return to Earth. For example, in March 2020 a glitch in the Voyager 2 deep space probe caused it to shut down, but after a little over a week, NASA engineers fixed the glitch. Nevertheless, one should never discount the ingenuity of the people who design and operate spacecraft. However, they got the same error when they tried. There is another computer onboard the telescope’s platform and NASA operational personnel have tried to use it. Initial diagnostic tests suggested that the problem was with a deteriorating memory module, but the computer failed to operate with a backup module, suggesting that the issue is more serious. The failing piece of hardware is called the payload computer and it is used to control and coordinate the scientific instruments and make sure that they are working nominally. By any measure, the Hubble Space Telescope is a singularly successful instrument. It has even helped create a vast three-dimensional map of dark matter – a substance that can’t be seen and the existence of which we can only infer through precise astronomical measurements of ordinary matter. The Hubble Telescope discovered moons orbiting Pluto and it proved that almost every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its heart. These galaxies existed nearly ten billion years before the Earth existed.Īn image of Jupiter created from data captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. At closer distances, it has photographed hundreds of thousands of ancient galaxies that formed long before the Earth even existed – each galaxy a vast and thriving stellar metropolis, where hundreds of billions of stars were born, lived their lives and died. Hubble has peered to great distances, seeing the most distant galaxy ever observed – one that formed 400 million years after the Big Bang, a mere 3% of the universe’s current age. As of this Wednesday, the Hubble Space Telescope is not operational. The operators have tried valiantly to fix the wayward computer, but they failed. ![]() The instrument automatically placed itself in safe mode and it notified NASA operators of the situation. On June 13, a crucial component that operated the telescope stopped working. ![]() However, it is possible that its reign has ended. Quite literally, Hubble has caused the astronomical community to rewrite the textbooks. Safely nestled in its cargo bay was the powerful Hubble Space Telescope, which would become the most successful of its kind. While the launch of any space-going vehicle is a glorious spectacle, this particular mission was special. ![]()
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