Uh oh, the Hubble is acting weird [again]

BGR ^ | March 14th, 2021 at 10:34 AM | Mike Wehner

[BenLurkin]

March 7th, Hubble unexpectedly shut down its science observations. The automated systems that keep track of the spacecraft’s health triggered the switch, putting the telescope into “safe mode” due to what is being described as “a software error within the spacecraft’s main computer.” Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of the weirdness that Hubble’s handlers had to deal with over the past week.

As NASA explains in a new blog post, The error occurred at approximately 4 a.m. EST. When the Hubble team checked in on the telescope to see what was going on they discovered that something was amiss in a recent update they did to the spacecraft’s software. The change was supposed to help the telescope remain stable despite one of its gyroscopes not being what it used to be. “[The Hubble team] determined that the enhancement did not have permission to write to a specific location in computer memory, which caused an issue with the main flight computer and subsequently caused the spacecraft to enter a safe mode,” NASA says.

NASA says it is already working on a fix for the software issue and will roll back the changes it made in the meantime so that the telescope can get back to work. However, when the team was taking a nice hard look at the spacecraft’s systems they spotted another problem: Hubble’s auto-closing aperture door was stuck open. The door is designed to close if the telescope accidentally points toward the Sun, as this could damage or destroy some of its most sensitive bits. The team confirmed that commands and power were making it to the door’s motor, but nothing was happening. Thankfully, a backup motor is installed for just such a failure, and NASA will now use the backup motor in place of the primary motor.

[BradyLS]

Lesson: Not every software update is a helpful advance.

[Fai Mao]

It probably is not diverse enough

[DannyTN]

The last image received was this...

[Vermont Lt]

The words software upgrade used to send chills down my spine. You spend the next week chasing crap all over your systems.

[Ezekiel]

Hubble’s auto-closing aperture door was stuck open.

It's truly what FReepers knew regarding the initial problem:

What is seen cannot be unseen.

[Viking2002]

I looked at that related article on the James Webb telescope. It was supposed to be launched in 2007 at a cost of $500 million. It's 2021, it's still sitting on the ground, and they've dumped $10 billion into it to get it launch ready. The Northrop Grumman engineers (Larry, Moe, Curly, and Shemp) have made so many mistakes, the thing will be an antique by the time they get it in orbit. They had a launch date rescheduled for this month and had to delay it again, ostensibly over this COVID monkey business (yeah, sure).

[EvilCapitalist]

Well he is Chelsea’s father, I’d act weird too. Oh. You mean the telescope.

[Yo-Yo]

The Hubble Telescope is 31 years old! It's a miracle it still works at all, especially given it shaky start with an incorrectly ground main mirror, and it proclivity to eat gyroscopes.

Once the Space Shuttle was grounded, there's no means to make repairs on orbit anymore.

[Secret Agent Man]

I think we’ve learned this lesson far long ago with microsquish

[jdsteel]

Maybe it caught sight of voter fraud and got cancelled.

[ThunderSleeps]

Covid is rapidly becoming what a buddy referred to as “the Golden chu.” Apparently over in the sandbox whenever gear couldn’t be accounted for it would inevitably be “remembered” to have been stored in a chu that had been destroyed by a mortar attack. He said after a few weeks it got to be ridiculous - the chu couldn’t possibly have held all the lost gear that was, on paper, lost in the mortar attack. Covid is the new get out of jail free for screwups of all types.

[algore]

And people yesterday wondered why Russia and China don’t want anything to do with NASA.

I don’t want to be anywhere near the SLS when it malfunctions.

the newscasts might sound something like this:

It’s starting to rain again; it’s... the rain has slacked up a little bit. The back motors of the ship are just holding it just enough to keep it from...
It’s burst into flames!
Get this, Charlie;
get this, Charlie!
It’s on fire... and it’s crashing!
It’s crashing terrible!
Oh, my! Get out of the way, please!
It’s burning and bursting into flames and the...
and it’s falling on the mooring mast.
And all the folks agree that this is terrible; this is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world.
Oh it’s... [unintelligible] its flames... Crashing, oh! Four- or five-hundred feet into the sky and it... it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen.
It’s smoke, and it’s in flames now; and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast.
Oh, the humanity!
And all the passengers screaming around here. I told you; it – I can’t even talk to people, their friends are on there! Ah! It’s... it... it’s a... ah! I... I can’t talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest: it’s just laying there, mass of smoking wreckage.
Ah! And everybody can hardly breathe and talk and the screaming, lady, I... I... I’m sorry. Honest: I... I can hardly breathe. I... I’m going to step inside, where I cannot see it.
Charlie, that’s terrible. Ah, ah... I can’t, I... Listen, folks; I... I’m gonna have to stop for a minute because I’ve lost my voice.
This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.

[Candor7]

Hacked software upload?

[C210N]

Did the Hubble get the jab too?

[GOPJ]

Did the Hubble take pictures of Oumuamua - asking for a friend...

[DoodleBob]

[llevrok]

The Hubble Telescope is 31 years old! It's a miracle it still works at all,

Not to mention all the micro junk floating around at thousands of MPH

[The Antiyuppie]

It is WAY past its expected operational lifetime.

If it stops working tonight, it will still be one of the greatest achievements of science and engineering.

[logi_cal869]

Space junk, micrometeorite or cosmic rays.

Gee: Would be nice if they had an asset to take an up-close look for damage.

/s