NASA continues to investigate the glitch that put instruments from a long-standing space observatory out on the ground.
According to a brief statement, the safety mode was activated on Oct. 25 for the science instruments aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA posted a longer statement on Monday (Nov. 2) that provided more details about the glitch as well as its plan to address it.
NASA continues to investigate the reason why instruments in the Hubble Space Telescope went into safe mode, suspending science operations. Agency personnel provided the complete statement. While the mission team investigates, instruments remain in safe mode and are otherwise healthy.
The new statement states that the instruments went down at 02:38 EDT (0638 GMT) Oct. 25. The agency did note something that it had not previously noticed: a similar glitch had occurred just two days before, but was quickly fixed.
The statement states that Hubbles science instruments generated error codes at 1:46 AM EDT Oct. 23. These codes indicated the loss of a particular synchronization message. This message contains timing information that Hubbles instruments use to respond to data requests or commands. The instruments were reset by the mission team, and science operations resumed the next morning.
The error codes showed multiple lost synchronization messages. Statement notes and science instruments were also affected.
According to the statement, Hubble personnel at ground continue to analyze spacecraft data. They are also working on procedures to produce more data for study. This work will take at most a week.
Hubble was launched in April 1990. It has been through many difficulties since that time. The observatory was created so that astronauts on NASA's space shuttles could visit it to perform repairs and upgrades. The last such mission flew in 2009, and since then the spacecraft has been kept purely from the ground.
The current problem is less severe than the computer glitch Hubble experienced in the summer, which caused Hubble to be temporarily disabled for over a month. Hubble had to be switched to backup hardware.
Copyright 2021 Space.com. A Future company. All rights reserved. This material cannot be broadcast, redistributed, rewritten, or published.
