During a news conference on Monday, NASA told reporters that it is delaying its mission to the Hubble Space Telescope until next year because of a serious breakdown of the observatory in orbit.
The malfunctioning system is Hubble's Control Unit/Science Data Formatter - Side A. Shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27, the telescope's spacecraft computer issued commands to safe the payload computer and science instruments when errors were detected within the Science Data Formatter. An attempt to reset the formatter and obtain a dump of the payload computer’s memory was unsuccessful.
Additional testing demonstrates Side A no longer supports the transfer of science data to the ground. A transition to the redundant Side B should restore full functionality to the science instruments and operations.
The transition to Side B operations is complex. It requires that five other modules used in managing data also be switched to their B-side systems. The B-sides of these modules last were activated during ground tests in the late 1980’s and/or early 1990, prior to launch. The Hubble operations team has begun work on the Side B transition and believes it will be ready to reconfigure Hubble later this week. The transition will happen after the team completes a readiness review.
Hubble could return to science operations in the immediate future if the reconfiguration is successful. Even so, the agency is investigating the possibility of flying a back-up replacement system, which could be installed during the servicing mission.
However, it would take time to test the replacement part and the astronauts have been training for a different type of servicing. They need time to train on the installation of the new part. NASA spokesman Michael Curie said NASA will also have to work out new mission details for the astronauts who have trained for two years to carry out five Hubble repair spacewalks.
For now, the October 14 launch has been postponed until at least early next year, possibly February.
Image Credit: NASA
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