telescope, one of the most famous telescopes of the 20th and 21st centuries, has faltered once again. After a computer hardware problem arose in late October, NASA engineers put Hubble into a coma, suspending its science operations as they carefully attempt to bring its systems back online.
The problem began on October 23, when the school bus-sized space probe’s instruments didn’t receive a standard synchronization message generated by its control unit. Two days later, NASA engineers saw that the instruments missed multiple such messages, so they put them in “safe mode,” powering down some systems and shuttering the cameras.
Hubble has had its share of hiccups over its long and productive career, during which it has documented everything from ancient galaxies to the birth and death of nearby stars. It launched in 1990, just a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it was deployed by the crew aboard the space shuttle Discovery. It now orbits about 340 miles above the Earth.
Jeletic and his team also try to anticipate potential mishaps. For example, they found that the thin wires Hubble’s gyroscopes depend on gradually corrode and break, and three of its six gyros have failed. Without gyros, Hubble can’t target anything properly. But on the last servicing mission, astronauts replaced the gyros and enhanced the wires so that they can’t corrode, solving the problem.
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