Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Hubble turns on one instrument, others remain in safe mode

Georgina Torbet
By

Engineers at NASA are continuing work to fix the troubled Hubble Space Telescope, which is experiencing problems for the second time this year.

The problem began on October 25, when the science instruments automatically switched to safe mode as they are programmed to do when an issue occurs. This puts the instruments into a basic operating mode in which they don’t collect any science data and ensures that the instruments aren’t damaged by any faulty commands. The issue seems to be a problem with data synchronization.

Hubble Space Telescope in orbit.
Most of the instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope remain in safe mode following a synchronization issue. NASA

The first step to gathering more data about the problem was for the team to turn on an old and unused instrument, Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) instrument. This instrument hasn’t been used in 11 years as it has been superseded by the Wide Field Camera 3, so the team could use NICMOS to collect information on the problem without risking the active instruments.

Recommended Videos

Next, the engineers moved on to turning back on a key Hubble instrument called the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which was recovered on November 7. This step was successful, allowing the engineers to learn more about what the problem is with the synchronization issue.

Related

“The Hubble team successfully recovered the Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument Nov. 7,” NASA wrote in an update. “The instrument has started taking science observations once again. Hubble’s other instruments remain in safe mode while NASA continues investigating the lost synchronization messages first detected October 23. The camera was selected as the first instrument to recover as it faces the fewest complications should a lost message occur. ”

The good news is that this part of the recovery process seems to have gone well, though engineers are very careful when turning on and testing systems as it would be extremely difficult to get an in-person mission to fix Hubble if anything went seriously wrong with the telescope. The engineers thus work remotely and very carefully to try to anticipate any potential issues.

“Over the past week, the mission team has continued investigating the root cause of the synchronization issues and has seen no additional problems,” NASA wrote. “The team will continue looking into possible short-term solutions this week and develop estimates for implementation. Once this occurs, the team will discuss returning the other instruments to operational status and resuming their science observations.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Hubble spots a massive star forming amid clouds of dust and gas
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a relatively close star-forming region known as IRAS 16562-3959.

A stunning new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the birth of a new, massive star at around 30 times the mass of our sun. Nestled with a nearby star-forming region called IRAS 16562-3959, the baby star is located within our galaxy and around 5,900 light-years from Earth.

You can see the sparkle of bright stars throughout the image, with the star-forming region visible as the orange-colored clouds of dust and gas stretching diagonally across the frame. These clouds are where dust and gas clump together to form knots, gradually attracting more dust and gas, growing over time to become protostars.

Read more
Hubble spies baby stars being born amid chaos of interacting galaxies
Galaxy AM 1054-325 has been distorted into an S-shape from a normal pancake-like spiral shape by the gravitational pull of a neighboring galaxy, seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image. A consequence of this is that newborn clusters of stars form along a stretched-out tidal tail for thousands of light-years, resembling a string of pearls. They form when knots of gas gravitationally collapse to create about 1 million newborn stars per cluster.

When two galaxies collide, the results can be destructive, with one of the galaxies ending up ripped apart, but it can also be constructive too. In the swirling masses of gas and dust pulled around by the gravitational forces of interacting galaxies, there can be bursts of star formation, creating new generations of stars. The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured one such hotbed of star formation in galaxy AM 1054-325, which has been distorted into an unusual shape due to the gravitational tugging of a nearby galaxy.

Galaxy AM 1054-325 has been distorted into an S-shape from a normal pancake-like spiral shape by the gravitational pull of a neighboring galaxy, as seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image. A consequence of this is that newborn clusters of stars form along a stretched-out tidal tail for thousands of light-years, resembling a string of pearls. NASA, ESA, STScI, Jayanne English (University of Manitoba)

Read more
The 60 best space photos of all time from Nasa, Hubble, and more
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

We're living through a golden age of space exploration, from rovers landing on Mars to astronauts living on board the International Space Station to the most complex and capable telescopes ever devised sending back stunning images of the cosmos. With technology like the high definition cameras on the Perseverance rover and the incredible sensitive infrared detectors on the James Webb Space Telescope, we're getting new views of the world beyond our own planet every day.

Some images of space stay entrenched in the public imagination, like the famous Pale blue Dot photos from 1990. It shows Earth as seen by the Voyager spacecraft just minutes before its camera was turned off. Traveling beyond the orbit of Pluto, the image shows the view when Voyager turned back around and viewed Earth -- the tiny, almost imperceptible dot seen against the emptiness of space.

Read more