In June, one of the space telescope’s computers stopped working after 31 years of impressive images of distant galaxies. To activate it, NASA had to call those who witnessed the start of the project, it looks like something from Hollywood. For 31 years, the Hubble Telescope orbited the Earth at an altitude of about 550 kilometers, providing breathtaking images of distant stars and galaxies. NASA’s mission was originally supposed to last just 15 years, but the spy is still flying, sending 1.5 million photographs back to Earth. Then, on June 13, 2021, the so-called payload computer, which controls and coordinates the work of scientific instruments on board the observatory, stopped working. When it stopped sending data to the main computer, it automatically put all scientific equipment into sleep mode. All attempts by the ground brigade to reset the disabled device through the main computer were unsuccessful. In principle, there was no reason for panic: after all, in extreme cases, all the important components of the Hubble exist in duplicate. So, the deactivated equipment also had a backup, which was replaced during the last Hubble maintenance mission in 2009. But with a computer like this, you can’t just press the power button. What to do with cassette and diskette? How is it possible that at high-tech NASA no one else knows how devices have worked in the past? It was as if someone had found an old box in the basement full of childhood memories, including a cassette of your favorite songs and a floppy disk. While I wonder who else has a cassette recorder and floppy drive, your little grandson has no idea what these weird plastic lumps are. This commonplace example serves to illustrate the speed at which technology is changing, and with it the technical knowledge required to use or repair it. And in the case of NASA’s rescue operation, any mistake could mean the irreversible end of the Hubble mission. Just in case, Nzinga Tull, the head of the observatory’s emergency team, also brought together the former engineers who were involved in the project. After all, NASA acknowledges that repairing a space telescope built in the 1980s required the expertise of everyone involved in Hubble’s history. “The collaboration was inspiring” More than 50 people took part in the two-week rescue operation. First, old and new team members went through a list of possible weak points together to try to identify the problem. Some of the NASA veterans who helped build the telescope were still familiar with the old control and data processing unit of the useful computer. Other retirees found in the original Hubble documentation, dating back 30-40 years ago, the instructions they needed to deal with the accident. “This is the benefit of a program that has been running for over 30 years: incredible experience and expertise,” says Tall. “It was inspiring to collaborate with both the current team and those who have moved on to other projects. They are showing such dedication to their Hubble, observatory and scientific colleagues! ” Step-by-step computer initialization was calculated on a simulator at NASA’s control center. By combining all efforts, the backup computer was successfully activated on July 15 after a five-week break. Two days later, the instruments again provided spectacular images of distant points in space. In the first one, you can see two galaxies that have just merged into the constellation of Capricorn, with three arms – all thanks to the cooperation of NASA retirees. Author: Alexander Freund
