Comments on: Hubble Rumor

By: Stephen Uitti

Stephen Uitti — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 18:55:54 +0000

This is, of course, old news, but the ACS is back on line.

By: Joe

Joe — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 20:45:28 +0000

According to this article the ACS is back up and should be available for science from tomorrow.

By: Steinn Sigurdsson

Steinn Sigurdsson — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:13:25 +0000

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.

By: Louise

Louise — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:18:24 +0000

“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

By: Harv

Harv — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 05:15:04 +0000

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.

By: Steinn Sigurdsson

Steinn Sigurdsson — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:29:57 +0000

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.

By: Louise

Louise — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 22:28:27 +0000

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.

By: JoAnne

JoAnne — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:40:29 +0000

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!

By: damtp_dweller

damtp_dweller — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:21:36 +0000

This is was already covered on Slashdot several days ago so it's far from being a breaking story.

By: Cosma

Cosma — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:17:56 +0000

Who needs rumors when you have press releases from the offical website?