Aging NASA Hubble Space Telescope Hustles to Survive Latest Technical Glitch
upstart writes:
Aging NASA Hubble Space Telescope hustles to survive latest technical glitch:
The Hubble Space Telescope has spent over three decades scanning the cosmos, bringing us glorious images and data from our universe. The spacecraft is showing its age. The Hubble team is now troubleshooting a problem with the telescope's payload computer -- a piece of hardware built in the 1980s -- that controls its science instruments.
The computer issue cropped up on Sunday. "After analyzing the data, the Hubble operations team is investigating whether a degrading memory module led to the computer halt," NASA said in a statement on Wednesday. Hubble is a joint project from NASA and the European Space Agency.
"After the halt occurred on Sunday, the main computer stopped receiving a 'keep alive' signal, which is a standard handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is well," NASA said. "The main computer then automatically placed all science instruments in a safe mode configuration."
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