Hubble status?
Ltown
I haven't seen any news about it since the announcement on Sep 29th.
That report mentioned that a redundant system could possibly be
brought on-line to allow data to be downloaded again. Otherwise, it
might be dead until the rescheduled repair mission next year.
Sam Wormley
Quadibloc
Ah: the key item, over and above what I saw in the news report, is
that work has begun on the transition to side B, and it was expected
to take about a week. There is as yet no further news, so presumably
that transition has not yet been attempted, so there is no further
news.
John Savard
Golden California Girls
subscribe to sci.astro.hubble. Daily status reports are posted. Several days
ago spacecraft resumed normal operation.
bcc.p...@gmail.com
wrote:
That is not correct - the Hubble has not resumed normal operations.
If all goes well, it <might> be back on-line at the end of next week.
I sat in on a Hubble briefing three days ago. Here is the outline:
~ On September 28th the Hubble's Science Data Formatter [SDF] began to
fail. The SDF mediates communications between the science
instrumentation and relays data back to the ground.
~ There are two identical SDF's on the HST. It was the "A" side that
failed. Engineers are now analyzing the "B" twin to ensure that it is
capable of taking over the SDF's tasks. The current schedule is - if
engineering approval is given, the B side will be booted up on October
15th. If "B" checks out we may resume regular operations at the end
of next week.
~ Ground testing of the "B" components were completed last Monday.
The Hubble team is waiting for NASA approval of the process.
~ Because of the level of integration of the Hubble's systems, in
addition to booting up the "B" SDF, six additional systems must also
be switched over to their "B" sides. The entire process will take at
least 48 hours.
~ There does not exist an exact replica of the SDF. IF NASA decides
that it is prudent to add a redundant processor to back up "B", a
similar device - the Science Instrument/Command & Data Handling (SI/
C&DH) system will be installed. The SI/C&DH was built almost 20 years
ago, has been kept in storage, and showed glitches when tested in 1990
and in 2001. As it seemed unlikely that the unit would be needed
quickly, if at all, the glitches were not tracked down; their cause is
unknown, and not yet fixed.
~ As the status of the SI/C&DH is uncertain at this time it is not yet
known if it is capable of being used for a repair.
~ The SI/C&DH is now being assessed, and current plans call for it to
be hooked up to the Vehicle Electrical System Test facility [VEST] in
the next two weeks or so. Then there will be several weeks of running
the SI/C&DH in a simulated Hubble environment to determine if the unit
is up to the task.
~ Given the troubles the SI/C&DH have demonstrated, it is possible
that the current plans for the STS-125 repair mission to launch in
February may be overly optimistic. It is hoped that the engineering
data required to make a determination will be available in mid-
November.
~ In addition to replacing the SDF, Servicing Mission 4 [SM-4] will
also replace two of Hubble's instruments, repair two others, and
install all-new gyros, batteries and insulation. The remod is
expected to give Hubble its best view of the Universe to date. The
repairs are expected to extend the mission to 2014.
Additional launch delays to service Hubble will put an additional
strain on the Shuttle's launch schedule. Current mission guidelines
call for a back-up shuttle to be on the pad, ready to launch a rescue
mission, if STS-125 runs into trouble. [Because of the differing
orbits of the Hubble and the International Space Station, the Station
can not be used by STS-125 as a safe haven, if the Shuttle takes
damage on lift-off.]
The current discussion favors delaying the mission, rather than
performing the flight without an available SDF spare. This may be (is
likely to be?) the last chance to service Hubble, so it seems prudent
to make the Hubble as sound as possible.
** Michael ** [JPL]
Tom Jarrett
"Ltown" <Lt...@nothanksmail.com> wrote:
From the latest daily, it sounds like they have already recovered side A:
# 18306-5 - Execute Safemode Recovery Macro @ 283/17:10z
# 18304-4 - Recover SIC & DH-A to Normal w/o AP6 @ 283/17:19z
# FLASH REPORT SIC&DH Recovery
# At 283/17:19:16 UTC, the SIC&DH was successfully returned to Normal mode
# upon completion of OR 18304-4.
bcc.p...@gmail.com
Press release issued today:
From: hqn...@mediaservices.nasa.gov
Subject: NASA to Provide Update to Hubble Anomaly Status
Date: 2008 October 10 12:02:44 PM GMT-04:00
To: hqn...@mediaservices.nasa.gov
Oct. 10, 2008
J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@>space agency name<.gov
Ed Campion
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
edward.s.campion@>space agency name<.gov
MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-200
NASA TO PROVIDE UPDATE TO HUBBLE ANOMALY STATUS
WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m.
EDT,
Tuesday, Oct. 14, to brief reporters about the status of efforts to
revive the data handling unit that failed on the Hubble Space
Telescope in late-September. The failure halted almost all science
operations on the orbiting observatory.
A meeting will be held at NASA Headquarters on Tuesday morning to
review plans for transitioning operations to the redundant "B" side
of Hubble's data handling unit. This equipment has not been used or
tested since Hubble's launch in 1990. If approved, ground controllers
could begin the process of sending commands to Hubble as early as
Wednesday, Oct. 15, to begin the transition. The process could take
as long as 48 hours to complete.
The briefing participants are:
- Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director in the Science Mission
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
- Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Space Telescope Systems
Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md.
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:
-end-
Ltown
Thanks for the conference alert. I missed the live streaming. Here
is the latest Hubble status report as of Wednesday, Oct 15th. All is
looking good so far...
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/SM4/news/status_update_20081015.html
Text below:
=====================================
10.15.08
The Hubble Space Telescope team completed switching the required
hardware modules to their B-sides about 9:30 a.m. this morning and
received telemetry that verified they had good data. Everything at
this point looks good.
The 486 computer on Hubble was reloaded with data around noon and
successfully performed a data dump back to the ground to verify all
the loads were proper. At 1:10 p.m. this afternoon the team brought
Hubble out of safe mode and placed the 486 computer back in control.
Late this afternoon, Gyro #4 (which was needed for safe mode) will be
turned off.
The team will reconfigure Side B of the Science Instrument Command &
Data Handling (SIC&DH) computer later today and verify it is
functioning properly.
Around 6 p.m. this evening the spacecraft will begin executing a
pre-science command load, which involves sending normal commands to
control the spacecraft and resume communications satellite tracking
with the HST high gain antennas.
We won’t know if we’ve been completely successful until around
midnight Wednesday when we demonstrate that the SIC&DH Side B is
talking to the instruments and able to pass data to the ground, said
HST Operations Deputy Project Manager Keith Kalinowski at NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
=====================================