Posted on 03/14/2021 7:51:36 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at bgr.com ...
I am retired now, but I remember that whenever a software “upgrade” was announced by the bosses, the employees all moaned in unison:
“Oh no, not this s&^% again!”
I'm pretty sure that's something the X-37 can handle, not like anyone in the government would ever admit to it in press, at least not while the craft is still in the cutting edges of technology though.
As Microsoft proves with every new iteration of Windows.
Fix one problem cause two more.
/laughs in Windows 10
Do you mean that Webb Hubbell is still trying to nail Hillary again after all these years? You’d think the man
would have learned by now. Bill did.
Our office got slammed on Friday by a Windows 10 update. Trashed... And by that I mean ‘bricked... 3/4’s of the office computers. We had to do complete re-installs.
My computer escaped destruction because I had modified the default update setting to defer installation until late afternoon. I had ample warning to ‘pause’ that update. We think we isolated the conflict to a network printer driver.
IOW, learn to code! Probably Nork, Chinese, or Russian hackers to blame.
The Hubble Telescope was designed to be serviceable while in orbit, but it requires humans performing space walks.
The X-37 is unmanned.
The X-37 is unmanned.
The Hubble Telescope was also designed in the 1980s. Robotics has come a long way since then and they aren't nearly as fragile as humans outside of a vehicle in microgravity. The only technical advantage of humans in space is that they can execute human thinking in real time, and with a task like servicing a satellite, a lot of that advantage is negated by how fragile and needy humans are since the tasks and reasonable contingencies have to be laid out ahead of time and set up in a way that a human can perform the tasks correctly in the narrow time window of an extravehicular maneuver.
So long as it has the correct tooling and enough fuel to accomplish the task, a robot can wait for months in position to fix a part while people on the ground look at a problem and figure out what commands to send it to fix something. In theory, a faulty part could be identified, designed and then manufactured in a 3D printer on orbit while the robot waits patiently on the satellite for it to be completed.
Voila! You have identified the problem with Hubble’s software ... it needs to be updated to Windows 10. Cheers!
HA! That’s what I was thinking. 😉
I’m sorry. I’ve watched Story Musgrave perform Hubble repair space walks. No robot is going to replicate what he had to do to get the Hubble repaired.
In NYC back in the 70s the magic word was “cut-backs”
It was used to cover for all sorts of governmental failings.
NASA had better have their WINDOWS purchase code available if they need it!
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