The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope is operating normally again after being blinded for 2 weeks by an electrical failure.
The orbiting observatory’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, which has the highest resolution and largest field of view of Hubble’s three cameras, abruptly shut down on June 19. Engineers discovered that a power supply similar to that in a laptop computer had stopped providing the proper voltage to two of the camera’s three detectors.
As it turns out, the simplest possible fix solved the problem. NASA engineers successfully commanded the Advanced Camera to switch from the balky power supply to an identical backup system. The engineers began uploading software commands on June 29, reported Ed Ruitberg, deputy associate director of the astrophysics division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., during a telephone briefing last week. The camera started taking pictures of the heavens again on July 4.
Over the next few weeks, a NASA-appointed panel of investigators will attempt to determine the source of the electrical malfunction. Astronauts installed the Advanced Camera, which views the cosmos at near-ultraviolet, visible-light, and near-infrared wavelengths, in March 2002. That was the last shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the now 16-year-old observatory.
A new servicing mission, which had been canceled by NASA’s previous administrator but was reinstated early this year by new chief Michael Griffin, remains in limbo. The agency has said that it will fly a shuttle mission to Hubble only after the shuttle fleet completes construction of the International Space Station. NASA expects that to happen in 2010, shortly before it intends to retire the shuttle fleet. But without a repair mission, failed gyroscopes and dying batteries could bring Hubble science to a halt as early as 2008, say both NASA scientists and university-based astronomers.
In the event that astronauts do pay another visit to Hubble, “we need to evaluate lessons learned from this electronics failure to determine if any steps need to be taken on other flight instruments … to make them less likely to encounter the same problem,” says David Leckrone, senior Hubble scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center.
Correction: This article incorrectly stated that NASA wouldn’t fly a shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope until 2010. The mission to repair Hubble could be launched as early as December 2007.
