Hubble is Back and Prepping for Science! - The Cosmic Companion July 16, 2021
The world's best-known space telescope is now returning to operation! Here's what happened, and what it took to fix it.
Hubble is back, repaired and readying to resume its quest to study the Universe. Here’s NASA’s latest success story.
Following a month of problems, the Hubble Space Telescope is now repaired, following a successful switchover to a backup payload computer.
Should everything go as expected, the 30-year-old orbiting observatory should soon return to its historic mission, answering some of the most fundamental questions of the Cosmos. (And we will get more pretty pictures! Yay!)
“The switch included bringing online the backup Power Control Unit (PCU) and th backup Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) on the other side of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. The PCU distributes power to the SI C&DH components, and the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data,” NASA officials report.
Other hardware aboard Hubble was switched over to accommodate the backup SI C&DH system. Procedures to switch science instruments, protected in safe mode, back online are underway. Stable temperatures are also being assured across various instruments.
Read more: https://thecosmiccompanion.net/hubble-is-back-and-prepping-for-science
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