Engineers report Hubble fix appears successfully
Engineers this morning announced that their attempt to switch to backup computer hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope was successful.
The switch included bringing online the backup Power Control Unit (PCU) and the backup Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) on the other side of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. The PCU distributes power to the SI C&DH components, and the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data. In addition, other pieces of hardware onboard Hubble were switched to their alternate interfaces to connect to this backup side of the SI C&DH. Once these steps were completed, the backup payload computer on this same unit was turned on and loaded with flight software and brought up to normal operations mode.
They are now doing tests to make sure everything is working as expected, and preparing the telescope to bring it out of safe mode and resume science operations.
This is great news, but to bring everyone down to Earth, we must remember that Hubble no longer has any redundancy in this area. Should there be another similar computer failure, the telescope will then be dead in the water, with the only way to bring it back a manned or robotic mission — something we presently do not have the capacity to do — to replace these units.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Engineers this morning announced that their attempt to switch to backup computer hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope was successful.
The switch included bringing online the backup Power Control Unit (PCU) and the backup Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) on the other side of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. The PCU distributes power to the SI C&DH components, and the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data. In addition, other pieces of hardware onboard Hubble were switched to their alternate interfaces to connect to this backup side of the SI C&DH. Once these steps were completed, the backup payload computer on this same unit was turned on and loaded with flight software and brought up to normal operations mode.
They are now doing tests to make sure everything is working as expected, and preparing the telescope to bring it out of safe mode and resume science operations.
This is great news, but to bring everyone down to Earth, we must remember that Hubble no longer has any redundancy in this area. Should there be another similar computer failure, the telescope will then be dead in the water, with the only way to bring it back a manned or robotic mission — something we presently do not have the capacity to do — to replace these units.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In April, Bob mentioned that Sierra Nevada had plans to build a manned version of Dream Chaser. With that perhaps a NASA mission five years from now could launch a crewed mission to Hubble to replace sensors, navigation hardware and other aging components.
Isn’t the Dragon 2 available right now for this?
Tom D Asked: “Isn’t the Dragon 2 available right now for this?”
It is hard to say.
Dragon was not designed with this kind of mission in mind, so it does not have a Canadarm or other mount to hold relative position during the work, and Dragon does not have an airlock, so all the astronauts would have to be in spacesuits during the work. Since NASA is not studying this possibility, I suspect that they think Dragon is not suitable for the job. I suspect that Starliner has the same limitations.
When you look at the pictures from the previous Hubble servicing missions you can really see how Shuttle was like a space station on the go designed for working on things, big things, in space. Huge cargo hull, flat areas, big and stable. You can get those features in different ways from different craft you could assemble in space. But it would be designed for the purpose.
George C: Starship will be even more a “space station on the go” than was Shuttle.
Mark: A manned version of Starship is likely to be ready far sooner than a manned version of Dream Chaser.
The recent fixes to Hubble don’t have to last forever. If they last as little as three more years, the capability to fix it in some fashion via human intervention should once more be within the capabilities of the U.S.