NASA To Repair Hubble By Remote Control

Matt_dk writes "NASA says it plans to fix the Hubble Space Telescope by remote control this week. The Hubble stopped beaming information to Earth about two weeks ago, when a data unit on the telescope completely failed. Scientists on Tuesday said they will bypass the failed unit and switch to a back-up system to restart the flow of information. The computer glitch forced NASA to postpone a shuttle mission this month to repair the Hubble. That shuttle mission has been postponed until next year." Update - 10/15, 17:45 by SS: Readers have pointed out further details from Spaceflight Now and the NASA press release.

So, a better summary...

[txoof]

NASA will flip a switch and kick in the backup system.

The story is pretty light on details. It reads like a 6th grader wrote it.

Re:So, a better summary...

[afidel]

Yeah most likely it will result in degraded performance and/or loss of functionality, just like the initial 'fix' for the bad mirror was to avoid using the most sensitive sensors. In a way it's very fortunate that this part broke before the service mission since now they know they will need to fly the ground spare and replace it along with the other scheduled repairs.

Re:So, a better summary...

[CrackerJackz]

I think it has to do with the level of cost of a failure, its one thing to have a system fail, but its more complicated then the trip alone costs 10+ million dollars

my guess is 5min to send the commands, 1.9weeks to diagnose what exactly failed, and how to repair it...

Re:Doesn't make any sense...

[camperdave]

Boss: Okay team. You have all you need to fix the Hubble. How are you feeling?
Shuttle pilot: Good to go, sir
Mission specialist: Hoo-ah!
Boss: Right! You're scheduled to launch...
[Underling comes rushing in.]
Underling: Mr Houston, we've had a problem.
Boss: What sort of problem?
Underling:The AE-35 unit on the Hubble just went to 100% failure.
Boss: How long will it take to prep a replacement?
Underling: Let's see... A week to order the part... three to five weeks of testing... decontamination and clean room testing... about two months, give or take a few days, sir.
Boss: Damn. That puts us too close to the end of the year. Well, boys! It looks like the mission will have to be postponed until next year.
Shuttle pilot: We'll be ready, sir.
Mission specialist: Hoo-ah!

Re:So, a better summary...

[Kjella]

Because the point is to avoid catastrophic failure. Imagine it was something like say a solar flare, backup systems online and poof goes the backups too. Or there is some form of short circuit that'll fry the backups too. Or just figuring out what the failure state is and how to best handle it. To take an example, say a Mars rover wheel is busted. How? Is it stuck? Has it lost the drive? Can it turn? Is the wheel itself torn? Is it just a sensor malfunction? You need to be 100% sure what state Hubble was in when it failed in order to be sure to recover properly. On earth it's really easy to throw a lot of real redundancy into things, in space it's still one device more or less and you try to figure out if the right side is safe when the left side is on fire. Most anywhere else it's either functioning correctly or you'd kill it and replace it with something that does. Trying to salvage half-borked systems only happens when they're really expensive or really hard to reach, and I think the Hubble qualifies on both.