Did You Know?

The Hubble Space Telescope is still awaiting its next visit from the astronauts. Scheduled for a repair mission two months ago (OPN, October 2008, p. 30), the orbiting instrument put itself into what NASA calls “safe mode” (essentially a sleep mode that prevents normal operations) in late September due to a glitch in an onboard computer. The Hubble crew at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center had planned to activate the redundant half of the data handling unit, which had not been switched on since the telescope’s launch in 1990. At press time, despite a couple of setbacks, the computer’s redundant side seemed to be working and NASA was about to resume normal science operations with Hubble’s Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2. NASA officials now hope to launch the seven-member repair crew into orbit next May.