Another NASA space telescope shuts down in orbit

[Winston]

Another NASA space telescope shuts down in orbit
12 Oct 2018

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-nasa-space-telescope-orbit.html

Another NASA space telescope has shut down and halted science observations.

Less than a week after the Hubble Space Telescope went offline, the Chandra X-ray Observatory did the same thing. NASA said Friday that Chandra's automatically went into so-called safe mode Wednesday, possibly because of a gyroscope problem.

Hubble went into hibernation last Friday due to a gyroscope failure.

Both orbiting observatories are old and in well-extended missions: Hubble is 28, while Chandra is 19. Flight controllers are working to resume operations with both.

NASA said it's coincidental both went "asleep" within a week of one another. An astronomer who works on Chandra, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted Friday that "Chandra decided that if Hubble could have a little vacation, it wanted one, too."

Launched by space shuttles in the 1990s, Hubble and Chandra are part of NASA's Great Observatories series. The others are the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which was also launched in the 1990s but eventually failed and was destroyed, and the Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003 and still working. Each was intended to observe the cosmos in different wavelengths.

 

[dr wogz]

Or maybe it's the impending invasion. first steps in invading, disrupt long distance sensors.. :O

 

[Zeus-cat]

Or maybe it's the impending invasion. first steps in invading, disrupt long distance sensors.. :O

So do we need to retrofit al space telescope with tin foil hats???

 

[kuririn]

Wasn't there a thread a while back about metal ball bearings in gyroscopes getting pitted by electrical discharges? Thought the problem was solved with ceramic ball bearings.

 

[NAR29996]

These telescopes were launched decades ago.

 

[watheyak]

Or maybe it's the impending invasion. first steps in invading, disrupt long distance sensors.. :O

Is the solar observatory still shut down? This combination sounds like the beginning of a great sci-fi novel!

 

[kuririn]

It's spores, I tell you. Gotta be. Gumming up the works. (Look up Star Trek Discovery: spore drive).
And that would explain why we haven't been able to find dark matter, even though it's supposed to comprise the vast majority of matter in this universe. It's intergalactic spores, traversing stars and even connecting into interdimensional space. I'm just wondering where are the giant space mushrooms that begot these mycelium spores.

 

[solid_fuel]