As Hubble Space Telescope is hit by computer glitch; NASA shares update

In a recent development in the space world, the NASA-led Hubble Space Telescope was hit owing to a technical glitch as confirmed by the US Space Agency. 

"Hubble has contributed greatly to our understanding of the universe over the past 30 years," said NASA in a press release.

The Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990 and changed vision of the universe, has been down for the past few days, informed NASA. The problem is a payload computer that stopped working last Sunday and NASA insisted the telescope itself and scientific instruments that accompany it are "in good health".

“The payload computer’s purpose is to control and coordinate the science instruments and monitor them for health and safety purposes,” NASA said.

Computer halted on June 13

A failed attempt to restart it was made on Monday while NASA said that initial evidence pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer problem. An attempt to switch to a backup memory module also failed. The technology for the payload computer dates back to the 1980s and replaced during the maintenance work in 2009.

Taking to Twitter, NASA established,

NASA has plans to launch Hubble's more powerful successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, in November this year. 

In an official statement, NASA said, "The computer’s purpose is to control and coordinate the science instruments and monitor them for health and safety purposes.  It is fully redundant in that a second computer, along with its associated hardware, exists on orbit that can be switched over to in the event of a problem." 

June 16- Hubble Space Telescope payload computer hit after repairing 

The purpose of Hubble Space Telescope payload computer is to control and coordinate the science instruments onboard the spacecraft. After the halt occurred on Sunday, the main computer stopped receiving a “keep-alive” signal, which is a standard handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is well. The main computer then automatically placed all science instruments in a safe mode configuration.  After Hubble operations, team personnel at NASA could reboot the payload computer on Monday, June 14, but it soon experienced the same problem.

The payload computer is a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) system built in the 1980s. It is part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling module, which was replaced during the last astronaut servicing mission in 2009. NASA stated the module has various levels of redundancy which can be switched on to serve as the primary system when necessary.