NASA Hubble repairs could get a lot of risks

NASA is not in a hurry to repair the Hubble space telescope, just as it is aware that the list of obvious candidates for the venerable of the unexpected judgment of the instrument, the risks of increasing permanent damage. This has more than three weeks suddenly opening Hubble, the spatial telescope tilting safely and interrupting scientific research.

The safe mode is, as the name suggests, a state of protection designed to minimize the probability of additional damage triggered inadvertently. The spaceship is safe and without immediate danger, NASA insists, but the efforts displaced to transform the telescope have become short.

Several weeks of investigation followed, as the potential problems facing the payload – responsible for managing Hubble Instruments – were sifted. It is hardware hardware, too. Designed for the first time in the 1970s, the standard STATECROFT of NASA-1 – or NSSC-1 – was the attempt of the spatial agency to standardize the parts for its missions.

The Hubble NSSC-1 goes back to the 1980s and its specification sheet reads as a page outside gadget history books. Up to 64K of the 18-bit central memory is accessible and a simulator that can operate at 1/100 of real time. NASA has actually installed two of the computers, one as backup and four independent memory modules that NSSC-1 could access.

It’s the theory, at least. NASA first tried to switch to the backup computer and examined using a different memory module. However, this did not manage to repair things.

This means that the hunt for a solution must spread, and that’s where things get more dangerous. According to Paul Hertz, NASA’s Astrophysics Director, obvious candidates dropped from the team must consult adjacent systems. This also includes some in the spatial vessel.

“To exchange and exchange redundant components on the other side, the spaceship should be ordered,” Hertz told space “, which is more risky because if you do something wrong, you will leave the ship spatial in an undesirable condition. “

This is not a situation that NASA wants to move on to something else, and while the Hubble team may want to have the telescope again, the agency adopts a more measured approach to implement potential fixes. “We do not deliberately put any time pressure on the team,” says Hertz. “I told them that the goal is to safely recover Hubble’s scientific operations, not to do it quickly.”

Any proposed plan should be approved by the NASA Supervisory Commission, which will weigh the potential for success against the possibility of damaging the telescope or spaceship.

Although it is not the first time in the Hubble history that the problems have occurred and that repairs have been necessary, the previous efforts to fix the spatial telescope have been a little easier than NASA could visit physically. With the disappearance of the spatial shuttle program, however, there is no way to manually stop by Hubble and manually exchange the components. The last physical interview, which NASA calls for the Service 4 or STS-125 mission, took place in May 2009.

Hertz seems convinced that, in time, the NASA team will discover what happened to Hubble and repair the telescope. Previous estimates suggested that it could last theoretically until 2040, assuming that no major problem arises in the interval.