Image: NASA
The iconic space telescope responsible for giving us a glimpse of the universe since early 1990, suddenly stopped operating on June 13 of this year. Per mission control personnel, the main payload computer responsible for controlling and monitoring all the science instruments on the spacecraft went into shutdown mode without warning.
Attempts by NASA to restart the aging computer system built in the 80s failed on multiple occasions, prompting the space agency to switch to a telescope redundancy system, which also failed to respond.
As engineers scramble to pinpoint the cause of this catastrophic halt, system administrators are considering booting up a second backup payload computer installed in the last service mission back in 2009. In the meantime, all science instruments on the Hubble are in safe mode until the computer issues are dealt with.
Although NASA is confident it will be able to restore Hubble's operations, the legacy optical astronomy instrument has its days numbered. Soon, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) - which has a field of view about 15 times that of Hubble - will begin its observing run. Even if the JWST is not a Hubble replacement per se, 30 years of continuous space operations have taken their toll on good old Hubble, which at some point will be decommissioned by plunging back to Earth in one last blaze of glory.
NASA Returns Hubble Space Telescope to Science Operations - NASA
Hubble has delivered new images since it started up again on July 16. Read more here.
www.nasa.gov