Hubble Space Telescope : The Wonders Of The Universe - NASA Hubble Telescope

a reply to: blackcrowe


Add another to the list!

Less than a week after the Hubble Space Telescope went offline, the Chandra X-ray Observatory did the same thing. NASA said Friday that Chandra's automatically went into so-called safe mode Wednesday, possibly because of a gyroscope problem.

Hubble went into hibernation last Friday due to a gyroscope failure.

Both orbiting observatories are old and in well-extended missions: Hubble is 28, while Chandra is 19. Flight controllers are working to resume operations with both.

phys.org, Oct. 12, 2018 - Another NASA space telescope shuts down in orbit.

Their warranty must be up or something...

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: blackcrowe


Add another to the list!

Less than a week after the Hubble Space Telescope went offline, the Chandra X-ray Observatory did the same thing. NASA said Friday that Chandra's automatically went into so-called safe mode Wednesday, possibly because of a gyroscope problem.

Hubble went into hibernation last Friday due to a gyroscope failure.

Both orbiting observatories are old and in well-extended missions: Hubble is 28, while Chandra is 19. Flight controllers are working to resume operations with both.

phys.org, Oct. 12, 2018 - Another NASA space telescope shuts down in orbit.

Their warranty must be up or something...

Or it could be... aliens! Not wanting us to know something.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Or something.

I did read that the Hubble will be able to work fine with only 2 gyro's working. Unfortunately. I can't find the article now. But in your article. It says Hubble is sidelined.

We'll just have to be patient and hope the JWST delivers the goods when it finally gets there.

Although these telescopes seem to be having issues. They have done a good job up to now. Hopefully they have a bit of life left yet.

Aliens wildespace?

At least it can't be blamed on homesick astronauts.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Good news for Chandra.

The team has completed plans to switch gyroscopes and place the gyroscope that experienced the glitch in reserve," NASA officials wrote in a statement today. "Once configured with a series of pre-tested flight software patches, the team will return Chandra to science operations, which are expected to commence by next week." Chandra has far outlasted its original five-year design lifetime; the scope has been observing the universe in high-energy X-ray light since 1999. Chandra has made many important contributions during its nearly two decades of life — helping astronomers identify a new class of "intermediate-mass" black holes, for example, and imaging the shock waves emanating from supernova explosions.

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a reply to: blackcrowe
Nice to hear that. Hopefully, the Hubble will be back on track soon, too.

Chandra, the Hubble, and Spitzer are somewhat of a team, giving us beautiful multi-spectral of objects like supernova remnants:



www.jpl.nasa.gov...

a reply to: wildespace

Chandra, the Hubble, and Spitzer are somewhat of a team, giving us beautiful multi-spectral of objects like supernova remnants:

Thanks wildespace.

You always show amazing pics in your replies. (Thanks to the above).

Very cool.

Good news everybody!

First some info about the gyros (helps explain what they did)

A wheel inside the gyro spins at a constant rate of 19,200 revolutions per minute. This wheel is mounted in a sealed cylinder, called a float, which is suspended in a thick fluid. Electricity is carried to the motor by thin wires, approximately the size of a human hair, that are immersed in the fluid. Electronics within the gyro detect very small movements of the axis of the wheel and communicate this information to Hubble's central computer. These gyros have two modes—high and low. High mode is a coarse mode used to measure large rotation rates when the spacecraft turns across the sky from one target to the next. Low mode is a precision mode used to measure finer rotations when the spacecraft locks onto a target and needs to stay very still.

Then...

In an attempt to correct the erroneously high rates produced by the backup gyro, the Hubble operations team executed a running restart of the gyro on Oct. 16. This procedure turned the gyro off for one second, and then restarted it before the wheel spun down. The intention was to clear any faults that may have occurred during startup on Oct. 6, after the gyro had been off for more than 7.5 years. However, the resulting data showed no improvement in the gyro's performance.

On Oct. 18, the Hubble operations team commanded a series of spacecraft maneuvers, or turns, in opposite directions to attempt to clear any blockage that may have caused the float to be off-center and produce the exceedingly high rates. During each maneuver, the gyro was switched from high mode to low mode to dislodge any blockage that may have accumulated around the float.

Following the Oct. 18 maneuvers, the team noticed a significant reduction in the high rates, allowing rates to be measured in low mode for brief periods of time. On Oct. 19, the operations team commanded Hubble to perform additional maneuvers and gyro mode switches, which appear to have cleared the issue. Gyro rates now look normal in both high and low mode.

phys.org, Oct. 23, 2018 - Hubble moving closer to normal science operations.

So they flipped the switch a few times while making HST get jiggy with it and after being shut off for several years, they may have gotten full usage back! There are few more tests and to be on the safe side, they moved HST around some to verify that more movement did not cause the problem to reappear but so far so good!

YAY!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

"Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"



That's good news.

Hopefully.

a reply to: blackcrowe


The did try a reboot! Which is the common question. The other being, "Is it plugged in?"

My favorite to ask, "Was it working yesterday?" Which usually ends with a reply, "Oh. I haven't logged on in months..."

Ah, fixing the famous "ID 10-T" errors!! I am glad that I no longer do that job!

Maybe we can now get a picture of this (earthsky.org, Oct. 19, 2018): Small asteroid passed closer than TV satellites.

It was detected just hours before it flew by. 3 meters. They say it would have burned up if it did.

Deep space is cool too!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Thanks TEOT.

That small asteroid came close.

Was Earth at danger? No. Fortunately, it was just a 10-20 foot (3-6 meter) space rock, which means that most of the asteroid would disintegrate if it entered our atmosphere. If a space rock of that size did enter our atmosphere, it would be visible as an impressive meteor, probably even in daylight.

That's the advantage of living on Earth. Well protected. And. If something bigger did make it through our atmosphere. (As some do). It would only have a 25% chance of hitting land.

There's a bigger one due in the '20's. Going to pass between Earth and the geo sats.

There's an advantage spotting these things early. But. Most will just pass by.

Space is cool. I'm glad i got a ride on this ship called Earth.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

More good news.

Chandra is back in action again.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has bounced back from the glitch that knocked it offline two weeks ago. That glitch was caused by an orientation-maintaining gyroscope, whose misbehavior caused the venerable space telescope to go into a protective "safe mode" on Oct. 10. But mission team members were able to establish a new gyroscope configuration, and Chandra resumed science operations on Sunday evening (Oct. 21), NASA officials said.

"Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

"The team initiated a set of maneuvers to change the pointing and orientation of the spacecraft to confirm that the gyroscopes were behaving as expected," agency officials wrote in a mission update today (Oct. 24). [Our X-Ray Universe: Amazing Photos by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory]

"During the coming week, scientists will collect spacecraft data to fine-tune the performance for the new gyroscope configuration," they added. "As a final step, the team will uplink a software patch to apply any necessary adjustments to the onboard computer."

From here.

www.space.com... campaign=20181025-sdc" target="_blank" class="postlink">www.space.com... email&utm_campaign=20181025-sdc

a reply to: blackcrowe

Unfortunately. Kepler is offline again.

NASA's long-suffering Kepler Space Telescope returned to sleep mode just a few days after its most recent observing campaign began, the agency said in a statement released yesterday (Oct. 23).

"Following a successful return of data from the last observation campaign, the Kepler team commanded the spacecraft into position to begin collecting data for its next campaign," the NASA statement read. "On Friday October 19, during a regularly scheduled spacecraft contact using NASA's Deep Space Network, the team learned that the spacecraft had transitioned to its no-fuel-use sleep mode." Engineers working on Kepler have been worried about the spacecraft's fuel supplies since this spring, and in recent months the telescope has conducted only partial observing campaigns, then fallen asleep to ensure it has enough juice to send the data back to Earth.

From here.

www.space.com... dc

HST is up!

twitter: Cat's Eye Nebula (pic).

Just to celebrate National Cat Day.

The most prolific planet-hunting machine in history has signed off. NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has discovered 70 percent of the 3,800 confirmed alien worlds to date, has run out of fuel, agency officials announced today (Oct. 30). Kepler can no longer reorient itself to study cosmic objects or beam its data home to Earth, so the legendary instrument's in-space work is done after nearly a decade.

Today's announcement was not unexpected. Kepler has been running low on fuel for months, and mission managers put the spacecraft to sleep several times recently to extend its operational life as much as possible. But the end couldn't be forestalled forever; Kepler's tank finally went dry two weeks ago, mission team members said during a telecon with reporters today.

"This marks the end of spacecraft operations for Kepler, and the end of the collection of science data," Paul Hertz, head of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said during the telecon.

Even though Kepler has closed its eyes, discoveries from the mission should keep rolling in for years to come. About 2,900 "candidate" exoplanets detected by the spacecraft still need to be vetted, and most of those should end up being the real deal, Kepler team members have said. A lot of other data still needs to be analyzed as well, Dotson stressed. And Kepler will continue to live on in the exoplanet revolution it helped spark. For example, in April, NASA launched a new spacecraft called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is hunting for alien worlds circling stars that lie relatively close to the sun (using the transit method, just like Kepler).

Full article her e

And here's more about Kepler.

www.space.com...

a reply to: blackcrowe
Bye bye Kepler. Sleep well.

I know the Hubble takes very wonderful pictures of space, but in the long run they make me sad. I know intellectually that I'm just a tiny little flake of nothing on a rocky little speck of dust in a universe so big that my dumb monkey brain can't even comprehend it, but it's very abstract. Until the Hubble comes along and shows me pictures of stars and clumps of galaxies full of stars and proves it all. I'm here, I'm dead. That's what happened.

a reply to: wildespace

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter.

Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA's Deep Space Network on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and Thursday, Nov. 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing. Dawn can no longer keep its antennae trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.

dawn.jpl.nasa.gov, Nov. 1, 2018 - NASA's Dawn Mission to Asteroid Belt Comes to End.

Add Dawn to the list of dead satellites.

Cool photos up at arstechnica.com - The Dawn spacecraft exploring the asteroid belt has gone dark.

a reply to: wildespace

MORE For NASA's Kepler space telescope, the world will end in ice rather than fire. Kepler, which is responsible for 70 percent of the roughly 3,800 confirmed exoplanet discoveries to date, has closed its powerful eyes. The prolific telescope is out of fuel and will be decommissioned in the next week or two, NASA officials announced yesterday (Oct. 30).

Rather, Kepler team members will beam a single, simple command to the sun-orbiting planet hunter, triggering a decommissioning sequence that's already aboard the spacecraft. Kepler will shut down its radio transmitter and onboard fault-protection systems, becoming an inert chunk of metal that floats, silent and unresponding, through the cold, dark depths of space.

"Kepler is currently trailing the Earth by about 94 million miles, and will remain the same distance from the Earth for the foreseeable future," Charlie Sobeck, project system engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said during a teleconference with reporters yesterday.

Full article

www.space.com...[/ex news]

RIP Kepler.

edit on 2-11-2018 by blackcrowe because: (no reason given)

a reply to: blackcrowe

That'is BS! SOMEBODY NEEDS TO RUN SOME GAS UP THERE.

Seriously, if it's just a fuel problem, why not salvage it? You know how much money that cost and how young it is? What? I didn't know Mcds had an arm in this Biz, Fast, Easy, Disposable, SMDH 😤

a reply to: Arnie123

Even if they could refuel it. It would be outdated by newer tech. Like the JWST. (When it eventually lifts off).

Maybe refuelling will be an option for future missions.

Does seem a shame. As it is only lack of fuel.