10-October-2008, 11:44 PM
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Vulcan Administrator
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Greenbelt, MD
Posts: 26,006
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Hubble replacement part has glitches of its own
Quote:
Problems with a spare part for the Hubble Space Telescope – which has been stored for years at a NASA centre – may further delay a shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the telescope now targeted for launch in February.
On 28 September, errors were found in Hubble's science data formatter, which relays data between Earth and the probe's science instruments. The failure has prevented the telescope from making observations.
There is an identical formatter – known as 'Side B' – on the telescope, and NASA is planning to boot up that backup system next week. If all goes according to plan, that would restore the telescope to life.
But there is no backup for Side B, so last week NASA decided to delay its mision to service the telescope from October to no earlier than February in order to prepare a replacement part for flight.
Now, preliminary checks into the history of the spare, which has been stored at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, suggest the device might not be ready to fly in February.
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