Hubble trouble: Nasa space telescope’s 1980s-era payload computer offline
- Nasa has tried and failed to fix the Hubble Space Telescope several times
- The problem is a payload computer that stopped working on June 13
Nasa has spent more than a week trying to fix the Hubble Telescope’s computer hardware issues.
The problem: a 1980s-era payload computer, which is supposed to control and coordinate scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft and monitor them for health and safety purposes, stopped working June 13, according to a Nasa statement.
“After the halt occurred … the main computer stopped receiving a ‘keep-alive’ signal, which is a standard handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is well,” Nasa said in the statement.
The payload computer is part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling module, which was replaced in 2009 during the last astronaut-servicing mission to the Hubble, which launched in 1990.
The main computer has put all the scientific instruments into safe mode. An attempt to restart the computer the next day failed.
Further attempts to switch to a backup memory module and obtain diagnostic information on both modules also failed.