Posted on 06/24/2006 6:44:49 PM PDT by wjersey
BALTIMORE --
The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionized astronomy with its stunning pictures of the universe, has stopped working, engineers who work on 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 are 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 loss of the camera has not shut down the telescope entirely, he said.
"The Advanced Camera for Surveys is regarded as sort of the workhorse for the telescope, but there are other instruments that are still working," Campion said.
The camera sent messages Monday indicating power supply voltages were above their upper limits and causing it to stop working.
"At this point, the ACS is in a safe configuration, and further analysis is ongoing," according to a statement by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys consists of three electronic cameras and a complement of filters and dispersers that detect light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared.
It was installed on the Hubble during a servicing mission by the crew of the space shuttle Columbia. Development of the ACS was a joint operation among Johns Hopkins University, Goddard Space Flight Center, Ball Aerospace and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Hubble, launched in April 1990, needs new batteries and gyroscopes if it is to keep working beyond next year.
Death knell.
ping
Caused by Global Warming - Bush's Fault.
"Women and Minorities Hit Hardest!"
Hubble-trouble, you say?
Call the Energizer Bunny!!!
space ping.
That's what we get for letting the Clintons name a multi-billion dollar telescope after a crook like their pal Webster Hubbell.........
[I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I certainly do know who Edwin Hubble was]:
http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/hubble.html
I remember a story that they brought a retiree back to fix the optics on Hubble when it was sent up as a near sighted telescope. The fellow was the original designer of the optics, I think, and the he died shortly after.
Perhaps Dan Goldin will show his ugly mug on television, and explain yet again why "failure" really means "faster, better, cheaper".
Only he would need a mirror to do that....
but they say the average person will appear on a surveillance camera a hundred times a day....
Hubble, Hubble, 'scope in trouble
Re-entry burn, soon 'twill be rubble...
That means if I am average, my ugly mug is responsible for disabling 36,524 surveillance cameras each year. 8)
Art Bell will now be able to do a show telling us how Hubble was taken offline deliberately to give cover to the Vorgon colonizer fleet it would have revealed approaching Earth.
That is a stunningly beautiful photo of the Sombrero Galaxy. From our perspective it appears so perfect, so symetrical.
hmmm - wonder if that makes me sub-average?
I got tired of bouncing around the country more that 2 decades ago and moved to the woods - Little village, about 700 folk, one old timey general store - don't go the the "big city" often. Thinking about getting even further off the beaten tract. So as the world picks up speed, hurtling into insanity, I am retreating to life more like my grandparents in the early 19th cent. - and loving it
Better send a repair crew, on the double!
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