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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Is Back In Business
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 30, 2008 01:05 PM
from the at-least-mars-has-no-elections-right-now dept.
from the at-least-mars-has-no-elections-right-now dept.
Matt_dk writes "Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a 'perfect 10 both for performance and beauty.' (Meanwhile, the slowly declining Mars Phoenix Lander has now entered safe mode, according to reader CraftyJack.)
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Safe mode? (Score:2, Funny)
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Vista decided that the Lander was running an unlicensed copy...
(Yes, I know that it's most likely using VxWorks)
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Yes. From the ping times, the OS determined it was no longer on or orbiting planet earth, and thus, required an additional "non-terrestrial" license.
In Microsoft's defense, it did put up a dialog with a phone number to call to purchase the license.
Lander, not Rover (Score:5, Informative)
It's the Mars Lander (Phoenix), not the Mars Rover, that is going into standby.
Re:Lander, not Rover (Score:5, Funny)
Mr Mars: "So, where do you live?"
Mr Mars: "I live on Mars Street in Mars City."
Mr Mars: "Oh really? So do I! Where do you work?"
Mr Mars: "Mars Corporation."
Mr Mars: "No way!"
Mars Dog: "woof woof"
Parent
Re:Lander, not Rover (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Lander, not Rover (Score:5, Funny)
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Yep, the Mars Rovers did not die before Vista came out.
They seem to be well engineered and have a longer shelf life.
Let's hope (Score:1)
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Taken from a comment on
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/30/hubble-telescope-back-on-the-air/
# Dan Fischer Says:
October 30th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Seems youâ(TM)ve missed the new bad news for Hubble [flightglobal.com], namely trouble with the ground spare that is to go up with the shuttle - this mission is now in danger. Todays NASA telecon (at 21:00 UTC) will be interesting â¦
good news: it's back in business (Score:1, Funny)
Rover? (Score:2)
They're not shutting down the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, correct? They're talking about shutting down the Lander, Phoenix. The Rovers are still going strong.
Re:Rover? (Score:5, Informative)
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Deteriorating climate?
Surely the climate is fairly stable on Mars, and it's just seasons and weather changes?
Or is Mars undergoing climate changes?
The Rover is just "collecting science" (Score:4, Funny)
I knew those NASA guys were sandbagging.
Claiming to be carrying out "experiments" with "hypotheses," ha!
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Hubble could never be 'a perfect 10' (Score:1, Funny)
Hubble had lens implants.
zzzz (Score:5, Informative)
If everything I designed lasted 2.5 times its product life I would be happy.
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Its 2.5 times past its expected life.
The rovers are like cockroaches, nothing will kill them. They're closer to 20x.
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Its 2.5 times past its expected life.
The rovers are like cockroaches, nothing will kill them. They're closer to 20x.
Phoenix is at the end of its expected life of three to four months, which differs from it's planned primary mission lifespan of only 90 days. Note that not all the ovens have been used during the primary mission, as the craft was expected to last longer.
The rovers also had only 90 day primary missions. They are now 5 years past that, just about x20 that you mention.
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It's not shutting down per se. It's in a polar region and winter is coming, it's diverting most of the diminishing solar energy it receives to generating hear, so it won't be damaged by the cold. It will still be operational, just operating in a mode that isn't very useful for doing science.
Nothing's broken. It's last longer than was planned, and now they are taking steps so there is a chance it will last longer still.
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Actually from what I've heard its marginally broken. They were having trouble getting it into safe mode but managed to communicate with it and shut it down yesterday. However, its not responding today, so it seems it doesnt have enough reserve power to keep itself properly warmed. However, my friend (who was telling me about the issues today) mentioned some kind of "Lazarus Mode" that may let it wake up again come spring.
And apparently they're still able to get a lot of good climatological data off of it
Not Quite (Score:2)
The primary mission was planned to take 92 days, and we are currently on day 158 and counting, a factor of about 1.76 so far. Furthermore that 92 days was just the tentative science schedule, not the designed lifespan. The lander was designed to last until winter hit.
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To be fair, the 90 days wasn't really a planned lifespan, that was the prime mission that they needed to finish to be a "success". I suspect that the reason for this is partly funding: NASA likes to fund projects in increments in case something does go wrong. (They don't write a lot of software until the spacecraft is successfully launched, for example.) Plus, but low-balling the life expectancy, they can amaze everyone with what a great bargain the mission is when it outlives it.
I don't think anyone re
Can the next lander take nuclear power please? (Score:2)
The most interesting thing by far for the next polar (or near-polar) Mars lander to do would be to watch the winter ice caps develop around it.
After all, every single Mars mission mentions the possibility of life and water in the history of Mars, so that does seem to be important to us. Yet, there are millions of tons of water ice at the Martian poles, and given the amazing adaptability of life to extreme conditions on Earth, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility for life (of some sort) to exist at the
Funding to the right place? (Score:3, Interesting)
And now back to our regularly scheduled program "Diverting Funding from New Space Telescope Technology"
I am your host, Marlin Perkins, and this week, we are sending Jim into space to repair the HST instead of focusing our funding on newer telescope technology.
I understand that the James Webb telescope thingy is not a visible light 'scope. But, do you wonder what kind of HST replacement we could have had already if we had not spent so much time and money on repairs?
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Well, let's think about that, shall we? HST's total cost was about $1.5 billion when it was launched in 1990. (If that figure is 1990 dollars, it's nearly $2.5 billion now.) Being generous, we can figure a shuttle repair mission is around $0.5 billion, so four servicing missions are worth about $2 billion, comparable to the cost of a new Hubble. James Webb ST, by comparison, is estimated to cost $4.5 billion over its lifetime, so you'd get half of a new 'scope for the cost of keeping the old one working
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But, do you wonder what kind of HST replacement we could have had already if we had not spent so much time and money on repairs?
What do you mean, "already"? There would have had to have been a proposal many years ago in order to be operational today. As far as I know, the James Webb was the first space telescope proposed after Hubble, it's not supposed to go online until 2013, and there are no plans even as of today for a new visible light space telescope. Also as far as I know, the Hubble service missio
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In addition to the previous posters, who seem pretty on top of it, identifying that repairs are still cheaper than a new one, I'd also point out that space-based visible telescopes aren't as important now as they were in the nineties. The main reason to get it off of the surface is to eliminate the 'seeing' effects of the atmosphere, the way turbulence distorts signals and reduces the maximum resolution to ~1 arcsec (I think). This is the same reason that the big ones are built in high, arid places.
One of
...Mars Rover has now entered safe mode (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, I didn't know it had a F8 key.
Now that we're in safe mode... (Score:5, Funny)
I guess now we can only get images in 640x480 with 256 colors...
Safe mode... (Score:4, Funny)
Well, at least they chose "Safe Mode with Networking" and now will be able to look at NTBTLOG.TXT from a distance. Of course, given that it takes up to 40 minutes for round-trip communications to happen, they had to change the default setting from 30 seconds to 2400+ seconds, otherwise the lander's would have died before loading the power monitoring service--resulting in an infinite loop.
how f*cking cool is that picture ? (Score:1)
One galaxy going _through_ another ?
Mind boggling !
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Ollabelle, take a look here [hubblesite.org] for some larger images, including a TIFF which should be scalable to your desktop size.
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How fucking cool?
Super fucking cool!
Arp 147? (Score:2)
Seriously,
Re:Still blurry (Score:5, Informative)
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It's unfocused because it's not a true visible-light image, and because it's assembled from three images taken over two days. Drift happens.
Citation needed. Focusing has nothing to do with light being visible. You can focus shorter wavelengths like x-rays or longer wavelengths like they do in radio astronomy. And you claim about drift (of focus?) is also odd. I don't know anything about Hubble's focusing mechanism, but I assume they either do it for every image, or they only calibrate it every month or so. It is not like they let their camera slowly drift out of focus over a few days or so. Drift in pointing should also not happen, since Hubble
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Citation for it not being a true visible-light image: TFA. Yes, you can focus the other wavelengths, but they're not necessarily all emitting in the same shape, so when combined they don't necessarily fit together right. (I think that's poorly explained, for which I apologize.)
As for the drift, I was referring to the physical objects themselves (both Hubble and the galaxies); if they move between when each of the three pictures were taken, they won't line up exactly in the final image where they're combine
Re:Still blurry (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think for a picture of something that's 400 million light year away, it's pretty sharp. If you look carefully, you can even see the face of the amazing Mephistopheles at the bottom of the bluish galaxy (the orangy part). Just in time for Haloween.