Still working on an
Last wednesday engineers switched the data management system on the Hubble to the spare "B-side" and the instruments sprung back to life.
The old Wide Field/Planetary Camera (2) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrograph came back to life.
The someone decided to turn on the Advanced Camera for Surveys Solar Blind Channel and it popped again.
Back in safe-mode, back to square one.
Aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh!
"...an anomaly occurred during the last steps of the commanding to the Advanced Camera for Surveys. At 1:40 pm, when the low voltage power supply to the ACS Solar Blind Channel was commanded on, software running in a microprocessor in ACS detected an incorrect voltage level in the Solar Blind Channel and suspended ACS. Then at 5:14 pm, the Hubble spacecraft computer sensed the loss of a "keep alive" signal from the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer in the SIC&DH and correctly responded by safing the NSSC-I and the science instruments. It is not yet known if these two events were related.
The investigation into both anomalies is underway. All data has been collected and is being analyzed. The science instruments will remain in safe mode until the NSSC-I issue is resolved."
So, no call for proposals this week, since there are no observations to burn up the queue of residual targets for WFPC2 and NIC.
I am guessing they will turn everything on again, slowly, and see if they can maybe not turn on the ACS Solar Blind Channel...
Physical Science
Comments
Apparently the ACS problem was a software issue, the hardware came up but slower than the software expected, and so the spacecraft safed.
I have no idea how fixable this is.
Posted by: Brad | October 22, 2008 6:56 PM
Well, that is good, sort of.
Presumably it is fixable in principle, whereas most hardware faults might not be
and in a pinch maybe ACS SBC can be left off.
Posted by: Steinn Sigurdsson | October 22, 2008 11:08 PM