Nasa Delays Trip To Repair Hubble Telescope
A problem that struck the Hubble Space Telescope on Saturday will delay the final space shuttle mission to service it, moving the launching from next month to next year, NASA officials said Monday.
During five spacewalks, the astronauts were set to install two new instruments and repair the telescope’s best camera and a spectrograph, both of which had electrical failures. They were also scheduled to replace the telescope’s batteries and gyroscopes, among other things.
But on Saturday, a channel on a control system known as the Hubble Control Unit/Science Data Formatter which helps relay data to the ground failed, causing the telescope to go into a “safe mode” and cease observations. Hubble’s managers expect that activating a backup channel will restore the telescope to service later this week.
But that will leave the telescope with no backup if the new channel stops working, so NASA would like to have the astronauts replace the failed control unit with a spare from the Goddard Space Flight Center.
In a telephone news conference with reporters on Monday evening, Preston Burch of Goddard, Hubble’s program manager, said the control unit hangs, attached by 10 bolts, on the inside door of a bay that the astronauts can access easily. With luck, it could be exchanged during a two-hour spacewalk, he said. “We think it’s a relatively straightforward activity.”
It is too soon to tell, the mission managers said, whether replacing the control unit will bump another activity from the servicing schedule. The mission’s five spacewalks are tightly packed with activities, but the lead astronaut, John M. Grunsfeld, has been able in training to complete the camera repair in one spacewalk instead of the scheduled two.
Understanding what went wrong, testing the spare unit, integrating its installation into the mission schedule and training the crew to install it will take several weeks or more, Mr. Burch said.
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Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 6:39 pm under