One of HST's Cameras Is Back In Action 47
StupendousMan writes "One of the two big cameras aboard the Hubble Space Telescope is the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC2 for short. As the most recent HST status report indicates, the camera was recently powered up again and sent commands to take some test images. Today (Sunday, Oct 26), I received E-mail from a colleague at STScI indicating that the calibration images were 'nominal.' That's NASA-speak for 'fine and dandy.' The E-mail goes on to say 'The data look nominal, indicating that
Hubble optical imaging capabilities are in fine shape. (We can expect more glorious Hubble images in the near future.) ...
Science with WFPC2 has resumed, and plans are underway to restore ACS/SBC to service this coming week.' Let's hope that the other big instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), also comes back to life successfully. We should find out in just a week or so."
Good To Hear (Score:5, Insightful)
While this is good news, its still important to remember that Hubble is running on backup systems, and that whatever redundancy was built into the original design is largely used up. Hopefully this will allow NASA to push the scheduled repair mission forward.