Just heard a rumor at dinner that the main camera on Hubble had a voltage overload a couple days ago and is now off-line. The backup camera system has now been activated. Anyone out there know more about this? Any confirmations or denials or more info?
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June 28th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
Yes, ACS is currently in “safe mode” and not taking data while the problem is being addressed (NASA seems confident that it’s fixable). The other instruments on HST (NICMOS, WFPC2) are still operating.
Nice blog, by the way. I just found it the other day.
June 28th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Who needs rumors when you have press releases from the offical website?
June 28th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
This is was already covered on Slashdot several days ago so it’s far from being a breaking story.
June 28th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Thanks all. I’ve been sequesterd in a windowless room in Germany for the past couple days, so am a bit out of touch. I tried a google search but came up short (obviously used the wrong phrase to search on)…
PS: I was at a dinner table full of astrophysicists and none of them had heard anything about it!
June 28th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
STS-121 Discovery is scheduled to launch at 1948 GMT Saturday July 1. To complete the shuttle program 16 flights are planned to finish ISS, plus one additional mission in ‘007 or ‘008 to repair Hubble. Discovery flew the 3rd Hubble service mission in December 1999.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Yes, http://scienceblogs.com/catdynamics/2006/06/hubble_trouble_acs_down.php
Committee meets thursday to decide how to try out the side 2 (redundant spare) electronics. Concern is common mode failure in the power supplies, or independent failure (since it is equally old).
Will know ~ 4th July if ACS can come back on.
NICMOS runs mostly in the meantime – not many WFPC2 proposals in the
pipeline and one of the WFPC2 chips is busted.
If ACS is dead, then the funding for ACS proposals in this cycle will not go through and there will be a lot of pain in astronomy.
June 29th, 2006 at 12:15 am
I’d heard about this through a friend who works at Space Telescope. (and would only repeat what is said here)
Mostly, I’m just sitting on pins and needles since our team finally got a proposal through this cycle after 5 or 6 years of trying that uses ACS.
June 29th, 2006 at 9:18 am
“But in today’s oddly phrased statement, there is a strong hint that the solution is a done deal: ‘Engineers anticipate instrument observations will resume no earlier than July 3, with no degradation in performance.’” courtesy of Space.com
June 29th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
The solution is a done deal in that they will shut down side 1 electronics
and power up the spare side 2 electronics.
If it works, it works. If there is common mode failure it doesn’t work at all and both sides fail.
Most likely it will work just fine.
July 1st, 2006 at 3:45 pm
According to this article the ACS is back up and should be available for science from tomorrow.
July 18th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
This is, of course, old news, but the ACS is back on line.