Cool news about Hubble
A bit of bad news a few days ago -- the primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope stopped responding to signals from the ground.
Fortunately, according to
Yahoo/AP:
NASA revives main Hubble telescope camera
The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope came back to life Friday for the first time in nearly two weeks after NASA engineers switched to a backup power system, the space agency announced.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys shut down June 19 after voltage readings exceeded the acceptable range. The switchover to the backup system began Thursday afternoon and was completed Friday morning, NASA said.
"This is the best possible news," said Ed Ruitberg, deputy associate director for the Astrophysics Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. "We were confident we could work through the camera issue, and now we can get back to doing more incredible science with the camera."
The camera is scheduled to resume observations Sunday night. Other instruments on the orbiting telescope have continued to operate during the outage.
The ACS camera, installed by a space shuttle crew in March 2002, increased Hubble's vision 10 times and has given the clearest pictures yet of galaxies forming in the very early universe.
After the initial blunder of the incorrectly ground lens, the scope has done some amazing science. Good to see it still ticking away!
Posted by DaveH at June 30, 2006 7:46 PM