MENLO PARK, iNews.id – The past few months have been a challenge for the Hubble Space Telescope and the team of scientists and engineers who oversee the iconic observatory. NASA have confirmed they have successfully recovered the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument aboard Hubble on November 7.
On that date, the instrument has started to make scientific observations again. However, other instruments aboard Hubble remain in safe mode. The Hubble team continues to investigate the missing sync messages, which were first detected on October 23.
The Hubble mission team chose the Advanced Camera for Survey instrument as the first to be restored because it had the fewest complications in the event of a lost sync message. NASA is continuing to investigate the cause of the sync issue and says so far no additional issues have emerged.
The mission team is considering a short-term solution this week and will develop a forecast for the implementation of this fix. Once the implementation estimate is complete, the team can discuss restoring other instruments and returning them to operational status to continue work.
The investigation has been ongoing since October 23, when the issue was first detected. Hubble’s science instruments issued an error code at 01:46 EDT on October 23, indicating the observatory had many missing sync messages.
The instrument aboard the telescope is designed to enter safe mode if this type of error occurs. NASA was clear during the probe the spacecraft was operating as expected. All unrecovered instruments are in good health and are currently operating in safe mode while the investigation is ongoing.
After resetting the instrument and resuming science operations, on October 25 at 02:38 EDT, the science instrument again issued the same error code and entered safe mode state again.
On November 4, the Hubble team focused efforts on isolating the problem with a hardware command instrument that is part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling Unit. The team analyzed the Control Unit circuitry which generates a synchronization message that is sent to the instrument.
During their efforts to analyze the mission of the Control Unit, team members also work to identify solutions to the problem. Solutions could include changes to the instrument’s flight software, allowing it to check for missing messages and compensate for them without causing the instrument to enter safe mode.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
