Webb instrument back in operation

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February 1, 2023 9:13 am Robert Zimmerman

Engineers have returned NIRISS, the near infrared spectrograph instrument on the Webb Space Telescope, to full operation after rebooting its software and determining the cause of the problem.

On Jan. 15, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) experienced a communications delay within the science instrument, causing its flight software to time out. Following a full investigation by NASA and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) teams, the cause was determined to likely be a galactic cosmic ray, a form of high-energy radiation from outside our solar system that can sometimes disrupt electrical systems. Encountering cosmic rays is a normal and expected part of operating any spacecraft. This cosmic ray event affected logic in the solid-state circuitry of NIRISS electronics known as the Field Programmable Gate Array. Webb engineers determined that rebooting the instrument would bring it back to full functionality.

After completing the reboot, NIRISS telemetry data demonstrated normal timing, and to fully confirm, the team scheduled a test observation. On Jan. 28, the Webb team sent commands to the instrument to perform the observation, and the results confirmed on Jan. 30 NIRISS is back to full scientific operations.

Engineers actually have a name for such cosmic ray incidents that effect software. They call it a bitflip.

2 comments

David Ross
February 1, 2023 at 3:25 pm
*affect. “Effect” means to create the software.
I mean, I’ve been enjoying the “Three Body Problem” show from Tencent too, but . . .
Edward
February 2, 2023 at 7:05 pm
Paul Schillito, of Curious Droid, did a video a couple of years ago on sending data back from deep space probes. Although he doesn’t get into the interesting parts, such as signal processing (both onboard and on the ground), data handling, and data compression or handling bit flips, data dropouts, or interruption events, it is a good primer on data gathering methods and why the instruments are not necessarily the state of the art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrD1oe5_zvw (15 minutes)

Troubleshooting problems is thought out extensively during the design phase, and when there are problems, a fix is not assumed (just reboot and see if that clears it up) but are carefully analyzed to make sure that the “solution” will not make matters worse.

Unfortunately, not all planning and design works out as intended:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/design-flaw-in-indias-mars-orbiter/

From the linked article in the above BTB link:

“The trouble is they don’t actually send back the spectra. What they send back is the two numbers – the sum of the fingers measured by the first channel and the sum of gaps measured by the second channel – and then they take a difference of those two numbers and they think that that’s going to be the methane signal,” Mumma said.

“The problem, of course, is that when you have other spectral lines … like carbon dioxide lines which vary widely with temperature in terms of their intensity, then those two numbers … don’t represent methane alone. The net effect is that there is no way that one can back out those two signals in order to retrieve a methane signal,” he said.

“It’s really unfortunate because they succeeded so spectacularly well in placing the spacecraft into orbit at all, which was the major achievement for the first try,” he added. “But the reality is we won’t seeing any detections of methane from the Mars methane sensor on MOM.”

[ellipses in original]

As Robert wrote in his post: “They are re-purposing the instrument to measure the reflected sunlight coming off the Martian surface ”

However, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) probe did some good work: https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/indias-mars-orbiter-confirms-global-dust-storms-speeds-atmosphere-loss/ but ran out of attitude control propellants last year and its mission has ended.

The Webb telescope is returning excellent data that has shaken up the astronomical community with a new controversy:
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-didnt-break-big-bang-explained

The James Webb Space Telescope, not even finished with its first full year of observations, has delivered some real stunners. But amid the breathtaking images and unprecedented findings, there was a puzzling claim: that the telescope had detected galaxies in the incredibly young universe. Those galaxies were so massive and appeared so early that they, the headlines claimed, “broke” the Big Bang model of cosmology.

The claim went viral, but as with many things on the internet, it’s simply not true.

Now, there’s more research to back up the Big Bang. Recently, researchers took a more careful look at the data and determined that the distant galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope are, indeed, perfectly compatible with our modern understanding of cosmology.

Webb instrument back in operation

2 comments

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