Winston
Lorenzo von Matterhorn
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How Much Longer Will the Hubble Space Telescope Last?
1 Oct 2019
https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/10/01/how-long-will-hubble-telescope-last/
...the telescope’s instruments are likely to last longer than to 2030, although it has not been without its hiccups — the most recent of which affected Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3... On January 8, 2019 the telescope’s camera abruptly stopped working when it detected voltage levels outside of the expected range. That set engineers searching for what caused the problem. After investigating the issue, the team found that the voltage levels inside the camera were actually normal. Instead, data in the instrument’s telemetry circuits wasn’t accurate. ...many of the older instruments are not operating at full capacity. Certain parts of their detectors no longer function or must be carefully masked using software to ensure the data they take are accurate. Even with these limitations, however, the telescope is still an invaluable asset for science.
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed in 2009 when the telescope was last serviced, has taken more than 240,000 observations to date, contributed data to over 2,000 peer-reviewed published papers, and is the most-used instrument aboard the orbiting space telescope.
Almost 29 years since Hubble was launched, the Hubble Space Telescope is still a workhorse for exploring the universe. It provides a glimpse at some of the cosmos’ most incredible objects. Still, with its age, the telescope has faced a number of recent technical obstacles.
In October, Hubble’s science observations stopped for three weeks when one of its gyroscopes failed. The gyroscopes control how the telescope points and orients itself, and this failure left the telescope with only three of its six gyroscopes operational. Three weeks after the failure, Hubble resumed operations with these three gyroscopes. Thankfully, the remaining gyroscopes are expected to last longer than the gyroscopes that have already failed.
1 Oct 2019
https://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/10/01/how-long-will-hubble-telescope-last/
...the telescope’s instruments are likely to last longer than to 2030, although it has not been without its hiccups — the most recent of which affected Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3... On January 8, 2019 the telescope’s camera abruptly stopped working when it detected voltage levels outside of the expected range. That set engineers searching for what caused the problem. After investigating the issue, the team found that the voltage levels inside the camera were actually normal. Instead, data in the instrument’s telemetry circuits wasn’t accurate. ...many of the older instruments are not operating at full capacity. Certain parts of their detectors no longer function or must be carefully masked using software to ensure the data they take are accurate. Even with these limitations, however, the telescope is still an invaluable asset for science.
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed in 2009 when the telescope was last serviced, has taken more than 240,000 observations to date, contributed data to over 2,000 peer-reviewed published papers, and is the most-used instrument aboard the orbiting space telescope.
Almost 29 years since Hubble was launched, the Hubble Space Telescope is still a workhorse for exploring the universe. It provides a glimpse at some of the cosmos’ most incredible objects. Still, with its age, the telescope has faced a number of recent technical obstacles.
In October, Hubble’s science observations stopped for three weeks when one of its gyroscopes failed. The gyroscopes control how the telescope points and orients itself, and this failure left the telescope with only three of its six gyroscopes operational. Three weeks after the failure, Hubble resumed operations with these three gyroscopes. Thankfully, the remaining gyroscopes are expected to last longer than the gyroscopes that have already failed.