This story was updated at 4:46 p.m. EDT.
NASA's
long-distance effort to revive the ailing Hubble Space Telescope is going well,
with the orbital observatory on track to resume science observations by week's
end, agency officials said Thursday.
The two-day
repair began early Wednesday as NASA engineers began commanding Hubble from
the ground to switch to a backup system after its main data relay channel
failed last month. But remote control fix is tricky, requiring systems to power
up after nearly two decades of hibernation.
"Everything
is going fine," said Susan Hendrix, a spokesperson at NASA's Goddard Space
Center in Greenbelt, Md., where Hubble
operations are based. "Everything is going according to plan."
Hubble's main
science operations were silenced on Sept. 27, when the Side A channel of its Science
Instrument Control and Data Handling system failed after 18 years of continuous service
since the space telescope launched in April 1990. The malfunction prevented the
otherwise healthy Hubble from sending home the bulk of its science observations, including the trademark
views of space that have given the telescope its iconic status.
Hubble has
a backup data relay channel, Side B, but the unit and five related systems had
not been powered up since the space telescope reached orbit. After weeks of
analysis, NASA engineers were confident the backup system could be activated
and began the days-long process yesterday morning.
"I wouldn't
say it's a dicey thing," said Art Whipple, chief of NASA's Hubble systems
management office at Goddard, on Tuesday. "It is a complicated procedure and it
is one we have not done before."
If all continues
to go well, Hubble could resume beaming home science observations by midday
Friday, Hendricks added.
"The team
worked well into the wee hours to accomplish what they did yesterday," Hendrix
told SPACE.com. "The science instruments are going to take some internal
exposures today and start calibrating."
The
calibration activities are expected to be performed before midnight tonight,
NASA officials said.
Hubble's
recent glitch prompted NASA to delay the planned Oct. 14 launch of the shuttle
Atlantis and seven astronauts to the orbital observatory for a final
service call. That mission has been pushed to February 2009, with engineers
hoping to send a spare data formatter to restore redundancy after the Side A
failure.
advertisement
