Hubble Space Telescope Refurbished After Timing Problem

After an error that occurred in late October forced it into safe mode, the Hubble Space Telescope is now back up and running at full power.

Hubble experienced a problem with communications between its computers and instruments in October 25, when multiple sync messages were lost. To avoid any damage to its instruments, the telescope automatically went into safe mode in which only the basic essential parts of the telescope functioned. That meant it stopped collecting scientific data while engineers on the ground figured out what had gone wrong.

Throughout November, the Hubble team analyzed the problem and tested the problems by turning on an old, unused instrument. This allowed them to conduct a test without jeopardizing the currently active instruments that Hubble still needs to use.

Since that test yielded no further errors, the team chose to turn on each of Hubble’s four currently active instruments, one at a time. With no more missing timing messages, they turned on the final instrument, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, this week.

“The NASA Hubble Space Telescope team recovered the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on Monday, December 6 and is now operating with all four active instruments collecting science. The team has yet to detect any more problems with the timing messages since monitoring began on November 1, “NASA wrote in a to update.

NASA also explained that its Hubble team has a plan to prevent similar problems from happening again in the future, by allowing the instruments to continue to function even if some synchronization messages are lost. To make this change, they will gradually make adjustments to the Hubble software over the next several months, starting in the next few weeks.

“The team will continue to work on developing and testing changes to the instrument’s software that would allow them to perform scientific operations even if they encounter several lost sync messages in the future,” the update said. “The first of these changes is scheduled to be installed at the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph in mid-December. The other instruments will receive similar updates in the coming months. “

This was the second time this year that Hubble has been in trouble, with a problem with your computer making it go into safe mode this summer too.

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