NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Is Back In Business 70
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.)
Safe mode? (Score:2, Funny)
good news: it's back in business (Score:1, Funny)
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"
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!
Hubble could never be 'a perfect 10' (Score:1, Funny)
Hubble had lens implants.
Re:Lander, not Rover (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lander, not Rover (Score:5, Funny)
...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...
Re:The Rover is just "collecting science" (Score:3, Funny)
NASA has already tried to remotely solve an issue by remotely throwing Martian science ore at it: The design of the Space Shuttle successor platform. The result was the Ares V launch vehicle, which now required copious amounts of refined Earth science to work around the scientific flaws caused by Martian science impurities. They have learned their lesson about lightly using insufficiently-refined science the hard way.
Unfortunately the NASA budget doesn't allow them to buy as much science as they would need so nowadays they usually rely on either recycled second-hand science or alternative sources of science like Mars. That's also why they desperately want to get Hubble back online - it was launched with a substantial science stockpile onboard and they really need to tap into that, even if the Hubble design limits the applications of onboard science mostly to deep-space observation.
Given how much science might be found on Mars I think NASA should really try to get Congress to open parts of the National Science Reserve to them - after all, if they manage to get a small science refinery up there they might relieve the already-strained world supply (and generate quite a bit of money by selling access to Martian science to other countries). This is especially important as leading science experts predict that we might reach peak science in less than twenty years.
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.