Hubble partly restored, Atlantis heading back…

The Hubble repairs go well, but unfortunately not too well. As NASA reports, the restoration succeeded only partly, some systems are still defunctional:


On Wednesday, October 14, engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reconfigured six components of the Hubble Data Management System and five components in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SIC &DH) system to use their redundant (or B) sides. This was done to work around a failure that occurred on September 27 in the Side A Science Data Formatter in the SIC&DH and resulted in the cessation of all science observations except for astrometry with the Fine Guidance Sensors.

The reconfiguration proceeded nominally and Hubble resumed the science timeline at Noon ET on Thursday, October 16. The first activities out of that on-board science timeline were the commanding of the science instruments from their safe to operate modes. This occurred nominally for Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer. However, an anomaly occurred during the last steps of the commanding to the Advanced Camera for Surveys. At 1:40 pm, when the low voltage power supply to the ACS Solar Blind Channel was commanded on, software running in a microprocessor in ACS detected an incorrect voltage level in the Solar Blind Channel and suspended ACS. Then at 5:14 pm, the Hubble spacecraft computer sensed the loss of a “keep alive” signal from the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer in the SIC&DH and correctly responded by safing the NSSC-I and the science instruments. It is not yet known if these two events were related.

The investigation into both anomalies is underway. All data has been collected and is being analyzed. The science instruments will remain in safe mode until the NSSC-I issue is resolved. All other subsystems on the spacecraft are performing nominally and astrometry observations continue.

But at least some observations can be carried on.

At the same time, Space Shuttle Atlantis is heading back to the VAB to get to a save haven while the Hubble repair mission is postponed. Unfortunately, a rod struck parts of Atlantis while it was removed from the launch pad. It is now investigated whether or not repairs are necessary. From what I have read, the external tank probably needs some attention, the rest of the space shuttle stack seems to have not been damaged. Thankfully, there is enough time left until mid-February, which is considered the earliest launch date.

Hubble “Repair” looks good

It looks good for the Hubble space telescope. According to the NASA web site (quote below), the switch to a backup system looks promising. With that, hubble could operate while the ground folks prepare final repair plans. Repairs are scheduled to be carried out as part of the space shuttle’s hubble servicing missing, which now tenatively has been moved to mid-February (some sources say Feb, 17th 2009).

From the NASA site:

The Hubble Space Telescope team completed switching the required hardware modules to their B-sides about 9:30 a.m. this morning and received telemetry that verified they had good data. Everything at this point looks good.

The 486 computer on Hubble was reloaded with data around noon and successfully performed a data dump back to the ground to verify all the loads were proper. At 1:10 p.m. this afternoon the team brought Hubble out of safe mode and placed the 486 computer back in control. Late this afternoon, Gyro #4 (which was needed for safe mode) will be turned off.

The team will reconfigure Side B of the Science Instrument Command & Data Handling (SIC&DH) computer later today and verify it is functioning properly.

Around 6 p.m. this evening the spacecraft will begin executing a pre-science command load, which involves sending normal commands to control the spacecraft and resume communications satellite tracking with the HST high gain antennas.

“We won’t know if we’ve been completely successful until around midnight Wednesday when we demonstrate that the SIC&DH Side B is talking to the instruments and able to pass data to the ground,” said HST Operations Deputy Project Manager Keith Kalinowski at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Hubble Servicing Missing Postponed

Finally, I can come back to look a bit more at my space interests. My rsyslog project kept me so busy that I couldn’t follow space as much as I liked.

The first thing I see is that the Hubble Servicing missing has been postponed. There is a problem with a critical component inside HST, which, if not fixed, causes fatal problems. Thankfully, the faulty element is designed so that it can be replaced during a servicing mission. Also it was great luck that the component failed now, and not after the (final) hubble servicing mission.

The HST flight has been postponed to early 2009 (NASA tells mid-February as a “no earlier than” date) so that analysis can be completed and repair procedures be created.

As bad as it was, last year’s flight delays now have helped saved Hubble! Why? Simply: if not for the delays, the hubble servicing mission would already have been flown by the time the component failed. That would have been the death of hubble. So bad luck sometimes turns into good luck again :)