The Hubble Space Telescope shows its age for a while, but a new problem turns out to be particularly frustrating. As AP reports, NASA spent nearly a week (as a result of this writing) trying to repair a problem in the Hubble payload computer. The system broke on June 13 and the operations team had no success in restarting the computer in the 14th or a backup memory module. Agancey also failed in repeated attempts with both modules on June 17th.
The telescope and its scientific instruments are still in “good health,” said the agency, although the operators put the instruments in safe mode as a precaution.
This is not the first problem of this type this year. NASA spent days restarting Hubble in March as a result of a software error in the main flight computer. He also discovered that the tension levels of the large terrain camera had fallen beyond decades, to the point where team members needed to reduce these levels to prevent future issues.
As with this camera, age can play a role in this last problem. The Hubble payload system uses a 1980s-NASA-1 NASA standard spatial computer (NSSC-1) that includes two computers and four 64K CMOS memory modules. Only one computer and memory module is used at any time, but it may not have a lot of importance if multiple components fail. In this light, the spatial telescope James Webb can not come soon enough – while it was already billed as a hubble successor, it can be the only option if the old machine continues to fade with this type of frequency .