Reviving HST
Published on Oct 16, 2008 at 5:12 pm.
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Filed under space telescopes.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been given the appropriate commands to switch to its backup data handling system. So far, from what I have read, things seem to be going well. The backup has not been used since the spacecraft was launched nearly two decades ago, but it seems to be working. We’ll know for sure tomorrow.
The science instruments have been tested to see that they can communicate with the backup system. They seem to be doing so. The next step will be to take images of some things that we already have images of, and comparing the new images to the old ones to make sure that the backup systems are handling data like the originals. If everything goes as planned, then regular science may resume on Friday.
For those not in the field, this seems like a long time since the failure of the primary system. You can read my posting from yesterday, where I talk a bit about why it has taken so long. Basically, NASA wants to make sure that we don’t make things worse. Also, Hubble does a lot more than just take pretty pictures. If that were all that it did, then that would not justify the expense of building and operating it. The data that is collected goes far beyond just pictures. What the public sees are the pretty pictures, because those pictures are much more exciting than a table of numbers. Astronomers like the tables of numbers, too, since they tell us a lot of things that the pictures don’t. We also need to know that the numbers that come back after the switch-over can be compared with the numbers from before.
One of the reasons that projects like Hubble and many other big space missions cost so much is that there are redundancies built into the system. That significantly increases the costs of the missions. However, in this case, and in many other situations in the past, those redundancies have saved missions.
-Astroprof
Image courtesy NASA
