Hubble Telescope's Main Camera Shuts Down

anthemaniac writes "Space.com is reporting that the aging observatory's primary camera, the ACS, has been in safe mode since the weekend. From the article: 'An initial investigation indicates the camera has stopped functioning, and the input power feed to its Side B electronics package has failed.' The camera has shut down before and been revived."

It has nothing to do with Hubble's 486.

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary clearly states that the article clearly states that the problem is with an input power feed, and not with the 486 used to control the cameras:

'An initial investigation indicates the camera has stopped functioning, and the input power feed to its Side B electronics package has failed.'

Re:this was obvious

[cbcanb]

There's one more Hubble repair mission to come (planned for Atlantis's final flight).

And despite future spacecraft like JWST, none of the planned replacements will cover the UV range.

Soyuz and Shenzou for repair missions

[heroine]

Assuming the space shuttle is retired after 2010, which seriously looks unlikely, how would they keep it alive? Soyuz and Shenzou are the only vehicles with air locks.

It looks like the space shuttle is going to be around long after 2010 and Hubble repairs may continue indefinitely. The appropriations for replacing the shuttle were finally canceled and there's too much voter pressure to fund low Earth orbit science.

Re:this was obvious

[rucs_hack]

true, but there's not much will for that mission, one has already been cancelled, and I doubt this one will go ahead either

*sigh* another incomplete /.

[Raynor]

RTFA: It was restored from safemode on Sunday -.-

They are hoping to switch it back over to the primary power supply and get limited usage until the shuttle gets there.

It's Cooked

[floateyedumpi]

It shorted, and burned enough plastic or wiring to trip the overpressure sensor (do wire shorts smell in space?). See this message from the Space Telescope Science Institute [stsci.edu]. Side A electronics are available which might be able to run a portion of the instrument. This has been expected since the first failure last summer, and "contingency" proposals are available to keep the observatory running using its other instruments (ACS has recently been the most used).

Re:What a huge POS

[Carmelbuck]

Since Hubble was orbited using Discovery, I doubt it.

ACS is a serviceable part

[iamlucky13]

The Advanced Camera for Surveys wasn't installed until the third servicing mission in 2002. It's been problematic since then. If it can be installed on a spacewalk, it can be replaced on a spacewalk.

Also, the Hubble servicing mission has been approved. Barring some act of God or Congress, Atlantis will conduct this mission on STS-125 in May of 2008. The ACS was not on the itinerary for service, but it might still be possible to add it to the agenda or push back the mission date if need be. On the other hand, it might be possible to work around whatever problem caused the latest shutdown, the third according to Wikipedia.

I should point out the foot dragging was largely spurred on by calls for the retirement of the shuttle as soon as possible (even immediately) and some general hysteria following the Columbia incident (as opposed to the rational re-examination that also took place). There is also the issue of the cost, which is in the range of hundreds of millions and had not been provided for, and a difference of philosophy between O'Keefe (administrator until 2005) and Griffin (current admin). Mission development is fully provided for in 2007, and should be in the 2008 budget, too.

If Hubble was going to roll over and play dead, it should've done so back in mid-2005, before more money had been spent on the servicing mission.

Email notice from STScI

[pq]

For other astronomers who might get their news from slashdot before other sources:

HST entered inertial safe mode on Saturday January 27. Preliminary indications are that this event was associated with an ACS anomaly. GSFC and STScI engineers and scientists are still investigating the situation, but it appears unlikely that ACS CCD observations (both WFC and HRC) will be available in Cycle 16. Current indications are that ACS/SBC can be restored using operational workarounds, so observers should assume that the ACS/SBC configuration will be available in Cycle 16.

The formal Cycle 16 deadline was 8 pm EST on Friday Jan 26. We received a total of 747 proposals, including 498 to use ACS/WFC or ACS/HRC. The latter proposals are unlikely to be viable. In order to ensure that we accommodate the science areas covered by those programs, we are extending the HST Cycle 16 deadline.

We encourage Principal Investigators who submitted proposals for ACS observations with either WFC or HRC to consider whether those observations could be made with WFPC2.

The new deadline is Friday 9th Feb, extended from 26th Jan.

Jargon alert for non specialists: ACS = Advanced Camera for Surveys; WFC = Wide Field Camera; HRC = High Resolution Camera; SBC = Solar Blind Channel; CCD = charge coupled device; WFPC2 = Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (an older instrument); STScI = Space Telescope Science Institute; and GSFC = Goddard Space Flight Center.

Re:Not a troll - legitimate point

[pq]

Here it is: the HST archive [stsci.edu]. You can download everything that is over a year old; proposers have exclusive rights for one year. Unfortunately, the data are really raw, so they won't be usable without packages like IRAF (PyRAF). Or were you not really making a legitimate point?

Re:this was obvious

[Shag]

I would be curious to know whether some of the new Earth based observatories give Hubble a run for its money?

New? Keep in mind that the top Earth based observatory, Keck, is 10-15 years old too. ;)

Oh, and with technology like adaptive optics, AO lasers and interferometry... yes, Keck (and others) can "give Hubble a run for its money" in some regards. Not across the board, though - no real UV capability, for example. Even up at Keck, there's still enough atmosphere over my head to ruin things.

*shakes fist and curses at atmosphere*

Re:Why Keep it going?

[Shag]

ground based systems can't look at a single point in space for a long duration image set

Neither can Hubble. The Hubble Deep Field was pieced together from 10 nights of images. The newer Hubble Ultra Deep Field, from 11 nights.

Pretty much any half-decent-looking astronomical image you see is a combination of multiple exposures. I'm one of the operators of the 2.2-meter (that's slightly smaller than Hubble) telescope on Mauna Kea, and have been teaching myself the process of getting and combining images in different filters/wavelengths. For example, I made this shot of M76 [hawaii.edu] from about a dozen exposures. (Using, incidentally, the same instrument that was used to discover the Kuiper Belt back in 1992.)

Just a data point.

it's not all bad news

[photontaker]

I work at STScI and it sounds like they're going to be able to switch ACS back to the side 1 power supply. Unfortunately, it means that the WFC which is the most used won't be working. A failure of the side 1 supply to WFC is why they had to switch to side 2 this summer.

The good news is that WFPC2 is still working even if it doesn't have the imaging area or sensitivity of ACS. The telescope allocation committee just re-opened applications for next cycle so lots of people are just going to switch their proposals from using ACS to using WFPC2 (myself included). As a side note: anyone can apply for telescope time since its run with taxpayer money. Just go to the site and fill out the form.

The other good news is that the servicing mission is going ahead for early 2008 when they're going to put in WFPC3 which is a bit better than ACS and will have much lower distortions and a great new spectrograph called COS. That'll take HST to the end of its life in 2013. At that point, the next space telescope, JWST, will be launched. In case you're wondering though, JWST will have a much shorter life since it won't be possible to service it.

So yeah, it sucks that ACS smoked itself but it's not the end of the world.