As a team deals with computer-related issues on the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA released images of a red, white and blue cluster captured by the telescope ahead of the July 4 holiday.
According to a June 30 press release from NASA, the large telescope – which has been in orbit since 1990 – has had “payload computer issues” since June 13. NASA teams were taking additional steps to investigate the issues late last month, leading to a suspension of science operations.
“In parallel with the investigation, NASA is preparing and testing procedures to turn on backup hardware onboard the spacecraft,” said the agency. “The telescope itself and science instruments remain healthy and in a safe configuration.”
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NASA explained that the telescope’s payload computer is located in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit and that a few hardware pieces in the unit could be the cause of the problems. USA Today described the payload computer as 1980s-era device that is supposed to control and coordinate scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft and monitor them for health and safety purposes.
Hardware pieces that could be contributing to the payload computer issues include a Command Unit/Science Data Formatter, which sends and formats commands and data or a power regulator within the Power Control Unit, which is designed to ensure a steady voltage supply to the payload computer’s hardware.
“If one of these systems is determined to be the likely cause, the team must complete a more complicated operations procedure to switch to the backup units,” said NASA. “This procedure would be more complex and riskier than those the team executed last week, which involved switching to the backup payload computer hardware and memory modules,” as it would require switching several other hardware boxes on the telescope.
Over the next week or so, the team will review and test their fixes for the issue, said NASA. A similar switch was performed on the Hubble in 2008 and the entire Science Instrument Command and Data Handling was replaced in 2009.
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NASA July 2 released an image captured by the Hubble of open star cluster NGC 330 of constellation Tucana, located around 180,00 light years away inside the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Stars in the image appeared to shine in red, white and blue. NASA did no specify when the image was captured.
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