How NASA Saved the Hubble Space Telescope With Teamwork

Have you heard of the
Hubble Space Telescope? It is one of the most successful space observatory
telescopes, made by NASA. 

It has been successfully
observing distant galaxies and other spectacles in space for 31 years. But
suddenly, in June, the Hubble telescope began to malfunction and had to be put
on sleep mode. It went through the worst glitches of the decade. As a result,
the telescope went blind!

That sounds serious and
concerning. But don’t worry, the telescope is back in action now. 

However, it’s
quite interesting to understand how many teams of NASA came together to fix one
of the most important space telescopes that was inoperative for a brief
while.

What went wrong?

On June 13, 2021, the
Hubble Telescope began to show glitches in its functioning. Its payload computer
came to a halt. This payload computer takes care of control and coordination of
all the science instruments in space. 

Cameras, spectrographs
and inferometers in the telescope were all controlled by this payload computer.
So, when it came to a halt, the main computer could not receive signals from
there. Therefore, the science instruments on Hubble were put in safe
mode.

How did NASA repair the Hubble Space
Telescope?

For a problem of this
magnitude, alumni from NASA, who built the actual Hubble telescope worked with
the current team to set it right!

The old and the new team
together discovered that the problem was with the Power Control Unit. And on
July 15, over a month after the glitch, the efforts of the teams paid off. They
fixed the Hubble and from July 17 , the Hubble telescope was made operational
once again.

These retired
professionals from NASA pitched in with their experience and helped build the
telescope. Being the original team to have worked on the telescope they knew the
ins and outs of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling unit,
where the payload computer resides. 

Isn’t it great
that the team effort paid off?

Interesting facts about the Hubble
Telescope:

The Hubble Telescope
was launched on April 24,1990. It was named after the celebrated
astronomer Edwin Hubble. 

The Hubble telescope
was instrumental in helping us find the age of the universe – 13.8
billion years.

Data from Hubble has
been used to publish over 18,000 scientific papers and has taken over
1.5 million observations of the universe

The Hubble Telescope
weighs roughly the same as two male elephants – around 11,000
kilograms – and is as big as a school bus.

Is this the first glitch?

This is actually the second time that the most
successful space telescope went into safe mode.The previous instance was
in 2008. Back then, it was
caused by a component of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling
unit failing.

The Hubble team had to rely on backup equipment. They
made a similar transition to return Hubble to regular operations. Later, during
the telescope’s servicing mission the following year, they replaced the
complete equipment and significantly prolonged its life. Speaking of telescopes,
want to know how
to make a telescope?

Do you know any inspirational stories of teamwork?
Share with us in the comments below:

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