Hubble Space Telescope’s Camera Shuts Down Due to a Malfunction
Hubble Space Telescope’s Camera Shuts Down Due to a Malfunction
Operations on one of the most important devices of the Hubble Space Telescope was suspended on Tuesday because NASA examines a hardware malfunction with the device.
Tom H Brown, head of the Hubble mission at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said that Glitch Hubble's optical and ultraviolet channels affect the Wide Field camera 3. This camera, set up during the 2009 servicing mission, has produced almost 50 percent of all Hubble. Science results in the last decade, and its many famous images
Brown said that engineers are finding a solution to the problem, which may take days or even weeks. But he believed that the camera would work soon. Since NASA can no longer serve the telescope, engineers created much redundancy in each device so that they can be ensured that they continue working after an accident.
This is the second technical issue facing Hubble operators in recent months. In October, one problem with one of the gyroscopes pointing the telescope in the right direction is interrupted for several weeks.
Brown said two glitches are unrelated, but they are symbols of the same challenge.
"Each of these issues is an indication of age," he said. Hubble is about 30 years old, and its orbit around the Earth exposes it in an extreme space environment.
NASA's billion-dollar astronomy program currently flies eight major telescopes with the aim of studying space beyond the solar system. Of these, but all are in their "extended mission" - the bonus year beyond that time in which the spacecraft was originally designed. There is a new major observatory in the development of NASA, the James Web Space Telescope, but engineering impairment and cost overuse have put the Web far behind.
Hubble is expected to work well in 2020.
Nevertheless, Matt Mountain, president of the University of Association for Research in Astronomy, which operated Hubble from NASA, told The Post in October that he was worried about what would happen if these and other observatories went away.
"We are facing a very difficult prospect as a community," said Mountain. "In some areas, there will not be just one binocular, and science will not be possible in any other way."
Hubble Space Telescope’s Camera Shuts Down Due to a Malfunction
Reviewed by Tech Gyan
on
January 10, 2019
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Reviewed by Tech Gyan
on
January 10, 2019
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