Hubble goes blind: main camera on space telescope stops working
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The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionized astronomy with its stunning pictures of the universe, has stopped working, an instrument specialist who works with the camera said Saturday.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys, a third-generation instrument installed by a space shuttle crew in 2002, went off line Monday, and engineers were still trying to figure out what happened and how to repair it.
'It's still off line today,' Max Mutchler, an instruments specialist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said Saturday.
Engineers are hopeful the problem can be fixed, said Ed Campion, a NASA spokesman at Goddard Space Flight Center outside Baltimore, which is responsible for managing the Hubble.
A bad transistor could be causing the trouble, Campion said. If so, a backup could be used. Another suspicion is that some of the camera's memory was disturbed by a cosmic event. That could be fixed by reloading the memory.
'Both possibilities are things that can be resolved here on the ground,' Campion said.
The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionized astronomy with its stunning pictures of the universe, has stopped working, an instrument specialist who works with the camera said Saturday.The Advanced Camera for Surveys, a third-generation instrument installed by a space shuttle crew in 2002, went off line Monday, and engineers were still trying to figure out what happened and how to repair it.
'It's still off line today,' Max Mutchler, an instruments specialist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said Saturday.
Engineers are hopeful the problem can be fixed, said Ed Campion, a NASA spokesman at Goddard Space Flight Center outside Baltimore, which is responsible for managing the Hubble.
A bad transistor could be causing the trouble, Campion said. If so, a backup could be used. Another suspicion is that some of the camera's memory was disturbed by a cosmic event. That could be fixed by reloading the memory.
'Both possibilities are things that can be resolved here on the ground,' Campion said.
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