NASA Struggles to Fix Failure of Hubble Space Telescope's 1980s Computer (scitechdaily.com) 111
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low-earth orbit in 1990 with an even older computer. Over the next 13 years it received upgrades and repairs from astronauts on five different visits from America's Space Shuttle.
But now in 2021, "NASA continues to work on resolving an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope," reports SciTechDaily — though "The telescope itself and science instruments remain in good health." The operations team will be running tests and collecting more information on the system to further isolate the problem. The science instruments will remain in a safe mode state until the issue is resolved...
The computer halted on Sunday, June 13. An attempt to restart the computer failed on Monday, June 14. Initial indications pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer halt. When the operations team attempted to switch to a back-up memory module, however, the command to initiate the backup module failed to complete. Another attempt was conducted on both modules Thursday evening to obtain more diagnostic information while again trying to bring those memory modules online. However, those attempts were not successful.
But now in 2021, "NASA continues to work on resolving an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope," reports SciTechDaily — though "The telescope itself and science instruments remain in good health." The operations team will be running tests and collecting more information on the system to further isolate the problem. The science instruments will remain in a safe mode state until the issue is resolved...
The computer halted on Sunday, June 13. An attempt to restart the computer failed on Monday, June 14. Initial indications pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer halt. When the operations team attempted to switch to a back-up memory module, however, the command to initiate the backup module failed to complete. Another attempt was conducted on both modules Thursday evening to obtain more diagnostic information while again trying to bring those memory modules online. However, those attempts were not successful.
Can Anybody Even Fix a Thirty-Year-Old Computer (Score:3)
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Or maybe we should just retire it and put up a newer and better telescope. The whole idea of sending people up to play space repairman is ludicrous.
Re:Can Anybody Even Fix a Thirty-Year-Old Computer (Score:4, Informative)
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Why retire a billion-dollar space telescope when it is still working? That seems a bit like throwing a way a perfectly good laptop because it isn't the newest and thinest model anymore. NASA currently has two follow-on missions from Hubble: JWST, which is scheduled to launch in mid-late November; and The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will probably not launch until at least 2025.
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Well me at least can see no problems in a strategy where you design a laptop in the seventies, start using it in the nineties with an explicit strategy to keep it working for decades at high cost in a narrow band of visible light while merely upgrading the components one by one. ...sometimes a fast turnover has definite advantages. You can adapt to the needs of the moment with the technological capabilities of the moment.
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Congress is in the way, a "fast turnover" is not in the cards. The space shuttle Colombia was supposed to be prototype, to be replaced with a new version incorporating improvements and lessons learned after 10 years, instead the rocket scientists in Congress continued to insist that it fly until it failed.
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The shuttle itself has the same problem as the Hubble, only on a much larger scale. It was designed to be a very large project because it had to justify NASA post Apollo and it was sold with an entirely unrealistic sales pitch which included extremely safe weekly flights. Don't put all the blame on congress.
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Not all the fault lies with Congress, the Pentagon needs to share the blame as well. The two groups took the plan presented by NASA, altered it completely, and sent it back with a fraction of the funding required to do it right and a mandate that certain parts be built in certain districts. The Space Shuttle is what you get when you let lawyers and generals design a spacecraft.
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It is certainly wasteful
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At one point they also had two Hubble-class orbital telescopes donated by the military (originally built as spy satellites). I wonder what ever happened to them?
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https://www.space.com/16000-sp... [space.com]
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The reality both a telescope and a wall are a pittance compared to the cost of the entitlement programs, the stimmies, corporate bailouts etc. You could do both, you don't have to choose one or the other
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And all of that is dwarfed by the bottomless pit of useless military spending. Do we really have to spend more than the next 8 countries combined (6 of whom are allies) on a military that hasn't actually won a war since 1945? (Grenada doesn't count.)
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You forgot Panama :P
Re: Can Anybody Even Fix a Thirty-Year-Old Compute (Score:2)
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Really? It wasn't much of a war when the Iraqi troops were retreating before the Americans had even started to deploy, the Marines barely had contact with the rear guard before they crossed the border, then the Air Farce started the slaughter of 80,000 retreating soldiers in their own country. I've always thought of it as more a mercenary action than anything else, the US (and business holdings of the Bush's) got paid to protect the Saudi theocracy from the only secular government in the area while gettin
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Well, you could add the Yugoslavia block, too.
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Wow, that's an old straw man, did your grandpappy make that by hand?
Re:Can Anybody Even Fix a Thirty-Year-Old Computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Think the real problem is "are there matching parts for the 30 year old computer that are space-service rated". Fairly sure that I'm not the only person with a slashdot account and a collection of old computers/parts. Also fairly sure said collections would probably not last very long in a hostile environment like space.
I think a good question to ask is probably "what computer system died, what does it do, and could something new and modular be made that could handle whatever I/O it does and then pass it all through to some sort of emulated machine on new/different hardware that will fake matching the old stuff"
No need to worry about hitching a ride until you know you can deliver the goods when you get there...
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I worked in aerospace and there was some frustration being forced to design for older generation hardware because the latest hadn't been space qualified. And in those days the hardware was rapidly evolving in capability. There was also an annoying tendency to freeze computer technology for any and all major contracts such that significant changes in hardware performance might occur between award and delivery, not to mention subsequent support and maintenance.
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A quick search shows that the NSSC 1 computer was designed in 1974 and uses core memory. Now to sit back and listen to the deep minds of slashdot tell me how the engineers were incompetent.
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Wikipedia says the Hubble Telescope originally used a DF-224 with plated wire memory and that this was later replaced with an Intel 486.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-224 [wikipedia.org]
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TFA says the memory modules are CMOS. The Science Instrument Command and Data Handling module which contains the NSSC 1 was replaced on servicing mission 4 in 2008 [nasa.gov]. I'd guess the memory modules were replaced then.
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I would not be surprised if core memory could handle the rigors of space, cosmic rays etc, better than CMOS. Still, if the CMOS was put in there in 2008, that's doing pretty well I'd say.
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For those of us that recall core memory, that’s hilarious.
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Parts from NewEgg or Amazon would crash every few hours because they're not radiation-hardened. You can't put them in a shielded box, either: enough shielding to protect commercial components would be too heavy to launch. We're not talking about a few cm of lead, more like a metre of lead.
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The shielding of CPUs and memory us usually just an additional silicon layer on top of it.
Your idea of cm or meters of lead is simply completely wrong. The main problem with "shielding" is not cosmic rays anyway, but impurities in the source material of the chip.
A cosmic ray is usually very fast alpha particle, or any other element, iron e.g. It smashes through anything anyway. You can not really shield for it. However, it causes a cascade of secondary radiation (electrons mostly) when it hits solid matter.
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Replace the whole fucking computer for fuck's sake. There must be design docs that show the physical I/O ports and their specs. I'd be surprised if they couldn't buy parts from NewEgg or Amazon that would work. Put them in a shielded box if need be but I think it would be stupid to try to over-engineer something that someone in a modern day chemical or other manufacturing facility could fix in a day or two.
Example of a modern day armchair scientist right here. Where'd you get your doctorate in aerospace engineering? How is over-simplistic drivel like this modded up?
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...for fuck's sake.
Slashdot mods are just happy they used "for fuck's sake" correctly.
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The reason the Space Shuttle used 486 cpu in its computers until the end was because the die size was large enough to minimize bit flips caused by radiation. The Pi would be toast in a day or two.
Re: Can Anybody Even Fix a Thirty-Year-Old Compute (Score:2)
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Replace the whole computer from something bought off the web. The specs for I/O should still be available. Program it and get it up there. The hardest part would be creating some custom I/O (physical) ports to plug into the board, but software should be able to handle most of the interface work through them. Then shield it. Send up a SpaceX mission to do the swap. For the last 30 years chemical processing plants and other high tech facilities have been continually automating/computerizing. They have to fix and replace outdated PLCs all the time. This isn't anything all that different (if at all). In the real world, as opposed to universities, research, and NASA, this kind of issue is fixed fucking daily. So come on, this is a ridiculous issue to overthink. In fact, I'd give it to SpaceX to fix straight out. They seem to be the only ones looking at the idea of working in space as a routine activity. They said the rest of the unit is fine, so swap the computer and bring it back online.
Oh wow, look at you go, you outsmarted NASA and JPL. The environment in space isn't different from terrestrial environments at all. Just Amazon some PC parts to the space station. They'll work just fine. /s
Re: Swapping a computer isn't rocket science anymo (Score:2)
Last I heard, 486 were the go to for space, just looked again, we really have not come very far since then , Iâ(TM)m sure processing power is not as much a problem as longevity.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s... [google.co.uk]
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I find it funny this is modded down. I think it pr
Easy repair at one time. (Score:2, Insightful)
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the space shuttle program ran far too long, and should have been shelved 20 years prior. With it's over-costs we could've been much further along in other tech by now.
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Keep an open mind until you've heard that a cost/value analysis was done.
Have you heard the tale of what a car would would cost if you bought the parts individually and assembled them?
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At one time we had a vehicle designed for repairing satellites. We'd just go up there, pull it into the repair bay and work on it in a pressurized environment without the cumbersome space suit.
That never happened.
I think only the Solar Maximum Mission and HST were repaired with the shuttle.
They were placed in the cargo bay, which is unpressurized.
And it wasn't a question of "just" going up there, the missions were very expensive and had to be planned in detail.
The Hubble should have been abandoned (Score:2)
long ago.
For the huge cost of those Shuttle missions a newer, better telescope could have been launched on an ordinary rocket, while leaving the Hubble to keep doing whatever it could.
But it was back to front. They need to launch the Shuttle to do something. So fixing the Hubble seemed a reasonable idea.
By any metric, the Shuttle was a huge expensive failure, and should never have been built.
Re:Easy repair at one time. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, we never had such a vehicle. The cargo bay on the shuttle was not pressurized.
It might be possible to send a repair crew up on a Dragon, but the Hubble is double the altitude of the ISS, and the space suits used in the Dragon are for emergencies, not EVAs, so it would be a challenge. Starship should be able to do it easily but we're probably two years out on a human-rated Starship at least. (We might launch and land with astronauts on Dragon, and dock with Starship to transfer in space until we're satisfied that Starship is safe enough during takeoff and landing for humans.)
Good side hustle for Starship test flights (Score:2)
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The Dragon is incapable of performing EVA. It doesn't have an airlock and can't be fitted with one. The "trunk" is too small to mount a remote manipulator large enough to work on something the size of Hubble. So Dragon is right out.
Starship could be outfitted for EVA work but they're a couple of years from LEO let alone EVA capable variants.
I don't know why you think the Shuttle was incapable of EVA repairs considering it repaired Hubble twice. The cargo bay not being pressurized is immaterial. The Shuttle
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Starship could be outfitted for EVA work but they're a couple of years from LEO let alone EVA capable variants.
Care to put money on that? I'll bet any sum you care to name that a Starship completes at least one full orbit within 12 months. I'll even give odds.
You're right that there won't be a useful EVA version within the next two years. The lunar lander variant will be capable, but that contract is currently suspended, and in any case SpaceX wasn't due to deliver that variant until 2024 at the earliest. (NASA hasn't worked out what the new schedule will be, but has admitted that Trump's demand for a 2024 landi
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Please read more carefully.
I wasn't in any way saying the shuttle wasn't useful for this sort of repair. I was just saying the comment about a pressurized cargo bay was wrong. Actually, with Hubble, I thought they kept it out of the cargo bay, but I may just be remembering it wrong. (And there were multiple missions, so they may have done different things.)
And yes, the Dragon isn't designed for EVA, but they could depressurize the cabin and not need an airlock. They would need different space suits and
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At one time we had a vehicle designed for repairing satellites. We'd just go up there, pull it into the repair bay and work on it in a pressurized environment without the cumbersome space suit. Too bad we decommissioned it without first having something to replace it with and here we are ten years later with nothing even on the drawing board to repair these multi million or, in some cases billion dollar satellites.
You're assuming that even if we had the vehicle that we'd do it. The Hubble has well and truly exceeded its mission time and largely is not worth fixing anymore. Even back when it was worth fixing we only once actually fixed it. Every other time we combined maintenance with an upgrade / addition of new instrumentation that helps perform some additional science. There's no such plan at present.
Flying to space to fix things costs money. Just having the vehicle doesn't mean it would be worthwhile using it.
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You're assuming that even if we had the vehicle that we'd do it. The Hubble has well and truly exceeded its mission time and largely is not worth fixing anymore.
The Voyager probes have long, long, exceeded their mission other than carrying the info they contain out into the wilds of space, but we still get valuable data from them.
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There's a difference between something without ongoing cost beaming valuable data, and spending a very large amount of money in extending the mission life of something. There's no question the hubble continues to provide valuable data.
The question is, if it stopped do you fix it or do you outright replace it with something else. At this point the answer would almost unanimously tend to the latter.
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At this point the answer would almost unanimously tend to the latter.
You forget Congress, the principle reason why Webb isn't replacing Hubble right now. Also the principle reason why if Webb doesn't open up as it should NASA will have to abandon it
Meanwhile Congress gave the almost-unknown National Reconnaissance Office so much money that they had two Hubble-class telescopes sitting in a nitrogen-filled warehouse for over a decade just as spares for an unknown number of others we the taxpayers paid for but are not allowed to know about, until they were finally declared obs
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oh you mean the badly designed and put together shuttle that came apart and killed people more than once? No, fuck that shit
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oh you mean the badly designed and put together shuttle that came apart and killed people more than once? No, fuck that shit
No, I'm talking about the replacement who's design should've begun, at a bare minimum, five years after the space shuttle was put into service and still hasn't been started.
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replacement designs exist and were started then. You don't need a shuttle to repair electronic module in Hubble anyway, that thing is far too big for bay. Any capsule with spacewalk capability will do, we've had those since 1960s
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Hubble both delivered by the space shuttle, but also serviced by it? Not that there were not a lot of things about the space shuttle that were less than ideal, but it clearly was not too big for the Shuttle cargo bay.
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before Hubble extended solar arrays and panels, ha!
serviced outside after that via spacewalk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I wasn't arguing that you needed the shuttle to service it, just that it was not too big for the bay. Looks like that's confirmed.
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it is too big for shuttle's bay, you're not paying attention. It's been too big since it was first deployed and extended gear. It will never fit in the bay again.
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It won't fit now, sure. You certainly seemed to be suggesting that it just would not fit in the shuttle bay at all. In any case, there does not seem to be any particular reason that the gear can't be folded back or detached to fit it into the bay. It's not like it's radically transformed. It seems like the procedures they needed to perform were easier to do outside the bay without going through the trouble of making it fit.
It does make you wonder about how much orbital debris is created during such a proced
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There are many reasons Hubble will never be folded up again nor stuffed into a bay. The extendable flexible arrays have been replaced twice, with rigid arrays. The spring loaded high gain antennas deploy and lock. you might as well suggest a half year old baby could be folded up and put back inside the mother's womb through vagina. Nope.
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Well, thanks for the weird mental image. Obviously if the arrays have been replaced then they can be removed and the high-gain antenna is "locked" with what? A spring-loaded pin? You make it sound like it's somehow irreversible. It's not like it welded itself into place. I think you may be chronically prone to hyperbole.
In any case, it clearly was not worth the trouble to NASA to perform the steps to get it in and out of the bay each time. To be clear, I do not disagree with you that the repair can be done
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The Shuttle was actually incredibly well-designed and put together. It was incompetently managed throughout its existence - nobody with a brain would deny that - but it was a really great execution of an idea that, at its heart, was a very sound and pragmatic step forwards from disposable single-use capsules.
NASA engineers were the best of their game. NASA management would be in over their heads at a McDonald's regional office.
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The Shuttle was actually incredibly well-designed and put together. It was incompetently managed throughout its existence - nobody with a brain would deny that - but it was a really great execution of an idea that, at its heart, was a very sound and pragmatic step forwards from disposable single-use capsules.
It was designed to deploy and return satellites which itself never made much sense.
I find it hard to justify placing people downstream from things "lots of fire" comes out. Crews are supposed to be above danger not under it.
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The Shuttle was actually incredibly well-designed and put together.
Not according to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). They revealed that the orbiter had ice strikes on the heat shield tiles on every launch. Each of the missions recorded where the ice strikes were made and that they were called "In-Family" events, cited by the board as "Converting a memory of failure into a memory of success" so as not to face the fundamental design flaw of the shuttle's side-by-side launch arrangement.
It was incompetently managed throughout its existence - nobody with a brain would deny that
NASA management was taken to task by the CAIB for using the moniker "S
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The Shuttle was actually incredibly well-designed and put together.
What? A "reusable engine" vehicle whose engines have to be fully overhauled between flights was incredible well-designed? Go on, pull the other one.
Even if NONE of the other drawbacks of the design were things, AND THEY WERE, this would still frankly put the lie to the idea that it was well-designed for its mission.
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You could, but it was actually rather dangerous for the crew and a bit pricey at $400 million. You could probably just as easily build a new telescope and launch it
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https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
SpaceX (Score:1)
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Colombia was supposed to be a prototype, to be retired after a decade or less and replaced with an improved version.
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After one of the Shuttle disasters NASA designed a robot to repair Hubble. It would go up on a rocket assuming Shuttle was grounded forever.
It never launched because Shuttle restarted but the design exists.
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Memory failures in Hubble telescope (Score:1)
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It's magnetic core memory - which, among all other types, is probably the least susceptible to corruption by radiation. Except perhaps punched tape.
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Wikipedia says the Hubble Telescope originally used a DF-224 with plated wire memory and that this was later replaced with an Intel 486.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-224 [wikipedia.org]
64K memory modules (Score:1)
Who designed it? Bill Gates?
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you're executing out of order.
1. learn about things
2. comment on Slashdot.
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Hope you're into infrared, then.
Webb doesn't have any optics capable of resolving visible-spectrum or ultraviolet light. Webb will see more things, but see them less clearly than Hubble. It's incredibly doubtful we'll get any images as breathtaking as, for instance, the Pillars of Creation [nasa.gov].
Comparison shot [staticflickr.com].
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The Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) on JWST has a channel which can take images at wavelengths as short as 600 nm = 0.6 microns. That's within the range of human vision, contrary to your statement.
Moreover, since JWST has an aperture roughly 2.5 times as large as that of HST, the images it takes at 600 nm will be sharper than those taken by HST. It's true that the plate scale NIRCam will prevent it from fully sampling this higher resolution, but the images taken by JWST at this wavelength will certainly riv
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Did they try PR#6? (Score:1)
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Just blow on it, it'll be good to go.
No need to hurry (Score:2)
The universe isn't going anywhere. Or is it.
Sorry, canâ(TM)t resist... (Score:3)
Click, hum.â .â
The huge grey Grebulon reconnaissance ship moved silently through the black void. It was travelling at fabulous, breath- taking speed, yet appeared, against the glimmering background of a billion distant stars to be moving not at all. It was just one dark speck frozen against an infinite granularity of brilliant night.â
On board the ship, everything was as it had been for millennia, deeply dark and Silent.â
Click, hum.â
At least, almost everything.â
Click, click, hum.âClick, hum, click, hum, click, hum.âClick, click, click, click, click, hum.âHmmm.â
A low level supervising program woke up a slightly higher level supervising program deep in the shipâ(TM)s semi-somnolent cyberbrain and reported to it that whenever it went click all it got was a hum.â
The higher level supervising program asked it what it was supposed to get, and the low level supervising program said that it couldnâ(TM)t remember exactly, but thought it was probably more of a sort of distant satisfied sigh, wasnâ(TM)t it? It didnâ(TM)t know what this hum was. Click, hum, click, hum. That was all it was getting.â
The higher level supervising program considered this and didnâ(TM)t like it. It asked the low level supervising program what exactly it was supervising and the low level supervising program said it couldnâ(TM)t remember that either, just that it was something that was meant to go click, sigh every ten years or so, which usually happened without fail. It had tried to consult its error look-up table but couldnâ(TM)t find it, which was why it had alerted the higher level supervising program to the problem
The higher level supervising program went to consult one of its own look-up tables to find out what the low level supervising program was meant to be supervising.
It couldnâ(TM)t find the look-up table .â
Odd.â
It looked again. All it got was an error message. It tried to look up the error message in its error message look-up table and couldnâ(TM)t find that either. It allowed a couple of nanoseconds to go by while it went through all this again. Then it woke up its sector function supervisor.â
The sector function supervisor hit immediate problems. It called its supervising agent which hit problems too. Within a few millionths of a second virtual circuits that had lain dormant, some for years, some for centuries, were flaring into life throughout the ship. Something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong, but none of the supervising programs could tell what it was. At every level, vital instructions were missing, and the instructions about what to do in the event of discovering that vital instructions were missing, were also missing. Small modules of software - agents - surged through the logical pathways, grouping, consulting, re-grouping. They quickly established that the shipâ(TM)s memory, all the way back to its central mission module, was in tatters. No amount of interrogation could determine what it was that had happened. Even the central mis- sion module itself seemed to be damaged.â
This made the whole problem very simple to deal with. Replace the central mission module. There was another one, a backup, an exact duplicate of the original. It had to be physically replaced because, for safety reasons, there was no link whatsoever between the original and its backup. Once the central mission module was replaced it could itself supervise the reconstruction of the rest of the system in every detail, and all would be well.â
Robots were instructed to bring the backup central mission module from the shielded strong room, where they guarded it, to the shipâ(TM)s logic chamber for installation.â
This involved the lengthy exchange of emergency codes and protocols as the robots interrogated the agents as to the authenticity of the instructions. At last the robots were satisfied that all procedures were correct. They unpacked the backup central mission module from its storage housing, carried it out of the storage chamber, fell out of the ship and went spinning off into the void. This provided the first major clue as to what it was that was wrong.
No worries new telescopes going up soon (Score:1)
And China is putting one up: https://medium.com/the-cosmic-... [medium.com]
Have they tried... (Score:2)
Amazon Prime (Score:2)
STS103 Mission to repair Hubble (Score:2)
For some great pictures of STS103 this video [youtu.be] shows details from the Hubble telescope repair mission .
"Even older computer"? (Score:2)
That's a mind-bogglingly STUPID. statement. For something you're sending into space, and trying to get to it to repair is is hundreds of millions of dollars, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you send bleeding edge hardware, you send stuff that's as solid and tested as possible.
You're probably too young to remember Intel's rePentium chip....
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Not crying over anything, one orange clown or one senile pedophile meat puppet criminal, one as bad as the other. Deal with that truth, your hero in the white house is a piece of shit on two legs this term too.