Hubble Space Telescope computer designed in the 1980s shuts down, NASA struggles to repair



NASA has announced that the payload computer that controls the equipment

of the Hubble Space Telescope, a huge telescope floating in space, has suddenly stopped. Due to the shutdown of the payload computer, the main computer was put into safe mode and all observation activities were stopped.

Operations Underway to Restore Payload Computer on NASA's Hubble | NASA
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/operations-underway-to-restore-payload-computer-on-nasas-hubble-space-telescope

The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in April 1990, is a huge space telescope with a length of 13.1 meters and a weight of 11 tons. Since the Hubble Space Telescope orbits about 600 km from the ground, it is possible to observe celestial bodies that are difficult to observe from the ground due to the influence of the atmosphere. In the past, he has made various astronomical achievements, such as filming Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 colliding with Jupiter and discovering evidence of planets on stars outside the solar system.



The Hubble Space Telescope is equipped with two payload computers for controlling, adjusting, and monitoring scientific equipment that employ a system called 'NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1)' developed in the 1980s. I am. The two are installed for redundancy and are designed to be switchable in the event of a problem.

In addition, the Hubble Space Telescope is equipped with four memory modules equipped with

64KB of CMOS memory. Of these four memory modules, only one is actually used, and the remaining three are reserved for redundancy.

According to NASA, the payload computer suddenly shut down on June 13, 2021. The payload computer and the main computer send and receive handshakes on a regular basis, but when the payload computer stopped and failed to send and receive this handshake, the main computer automatically entered safe mode.



The next day, on the 14th, the Goddard Space Flight Center controller sent a command to restart the computer, but the same problem occurred again. NASA initially thought that 'NSSC-1 stopped due to deterioration of the memory module' and sent a command to switch to a spare memory module, but this command also failed to execute.

NASA then tried to restart the payload computer again on the evening of June 17th. Attempts to bring all memory modules online to get diagnostic information for memory modules have failed.



Due to this error, all observation work of the Hubble Space Telescope was stopped. At the time of writing the article, the main computer is in safe mode until the issue is resolved. According to NASA, the payload computer is just stopped, and there are no abnormalities in the telescope or sensors.

The Hubble Space Telescope was originally set to operate for 15 years, but the performance was dramatically improved by repairing the defects discovered immediately after the launch by extravehicular activities of astronauts, resulting in 30 years. The above has continued to play an active role. On the other hand, there are many parts that are difficult to obtain in 2021, so it is difficult to repair them by EVA as before. Therefore, the aging of the Hubble Space Telescope has become a major problem, and in 2018, the operation was stopped due to the failure of the attitude control device.

Hubble Space Telescope goes into sleep mode due to a malfunction of the gyroscope --GIGAZINE



Even if the Hubble Space Telescope becomes unusable, the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is scheduled to be launched on October 31, 2021, so high-precision astronomical observations from space. Can only be done for a few months.

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in Hardware,   Science, Posted by log1i_yk