Once NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope makes a mistake, it shifts to safe mode.

NASA is working on resolving a memory condition that caused the telescope’s sensors to go into safe mode and reduced its science output. The Hubble Space Telescope has been surveying the universe for nearly three decades, delivering us spectacular photographs and data about our universe. The spacecraft is finally starting to show its age. The Hubble crew is actively troubleshooting an issue with the telescope’s payload computer, which operates the telescope’s science instruments and was established in the 1980s. On Sunday, a computer problem occurred. 

“After examining the data, the Hubble operations team is looking into whether the computer halt was precipitated by a malfunctioning memory module,” NASA stated in a statement on Wednesday. NASA and the European Space Agency contributed to Hubble. “The main computer missed receiving a ‘stay alive’ signal, which is a customary handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is fine,” NASA said. “All science instruments were once again automatically placed in a safe mode configuration by the computer system.” 

The Hubble team investigated reconfiguring the payload software prior to actually running through the same difficulties. Today, the organization will try and move to a backup module. If all goes well, the computer will run for a day to ensure that all of this is working properly, and then the telescope’s science instruments will be rebooted to bring it back into action. In recent years, the telescope has had to struggle with some rather technical issues. In March, a software problem sent it into safe mode for several days. As scientists wait for some much needed next-generation James Webb Space Telescope to launch, hopefully later this year, Hubble has proven to be extremely robust. 

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Hubble’s legacy will be followed by James Webb. We’ll just have to cross our fingers that the current software difficulty was therefore addressed. For more than three decades, Hubble has been a big part of our lives, and most of us aren’t ready to say goodbye just yet. Hubble is probably to battle past this newest snag and resume its essential science operations, based on previous efforts. Keep up with all the latest space news this year by browsing CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar. It’s even advisable to change it to your Google Calendar. Also some of the additional news is given in the online sites through the web browsers. You can learn more through the official nasa page, where all the official news are given for the people to read and get acknowledged.

Esmond Harmon

"Entrepreneur. Social media advocate. Amateur travel guru. Freelance introvert. Thinker."

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