As early as October 23, the Hubble Space Telescope began to report errors indicating the loss of synchronization messages, which contain the time needed for the instruments on board the telescope to respond correctly to commands sent. The operator then reset and resumed their routine the next day.
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However, on October 25, the same problems began anew, and Hubble immediately fell into emergency mode, as required by his programming. NASA convened its investigation team, which began preparing the necessary procedures to test the telescope to determine what was causing the synchronization data loss problem. Additional procedures for obtaining certain additional data were also planned, for which NASA reserved a whole week.
Currently, work is still ongoing, so the scientific instruments of the telescope are still in emergency mode. NASA is now focusing on the hardware that controls them, which is part of the well-known Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit. Specifically, the team of investigators focuses on the circuits in the Control Unit, which generates synchronization messages.
NASA is preparing that it may be necessary to work around this problem, most likely by modifying software that could monitor and compensate for the loss of synchronization messages without allowing scientific instruments to fall back into safe mode. In any case, these adjustments would be properly tested in simulations.
At the end of February, the team also prepared to test the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) to find out more about when and how often a new problem occurs. NICMOS can serve as a laboratory mouse here, as it is a device that has not been used since 2010, when it was replaced by Wide Field Camera 3. The problem, however, is that since November 1, when NICMOS was turned on again, it has not disappeared. one synchronization message.
NASA is now determined to wake up Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), or perhaps it has already done so. This is because it is the least complicated device if the problem recurs. It’s possible that the sync problems will go away on their own, but we’ll have to wait for that. Either way, the Control Unit will continue to be monitored as the most likely “culprit” and the above-mentioned software measures are likely to be implemented before Hubbble is fully operational again.
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