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NASA to Discuss Hubble Anomaly and Servicing Mission Launch Delay

Written by thomas · Filed Under Aeronautics News 

September 30, 2008

thomas

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA will host a media
teleconference at 6 p.m. EDT today to discuss a significant Hubble Space
Telescope anomaly that occurred this weekend affecting the storage and
transmittal of science data to Earth. Fixing the problem will delay next
month’s space shuttle Atlantis’ Hubble servicing mission.

The briefing participants are:

– Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate
at NASA Headquarters in Washington

– John Shannon, Shuttle Program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center
in Houston

– Preston Burch, Hubble manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters in the U.S. should call
1-800-369-6087 and use the pass code Hubble. International reporters should
call 1-773-756-0843.

As a result of the launch delay, NASA has postponed the planned Oct. 3
Flight Readiness Review and subsequent news conference. The review will
occur at a later date.

The malfunctioning system is Hubble’s Control Unit/Science Data
Formatter – Side A. Shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27, the
telescope’s spacecraft computer issued commands to safe the payload
computer and science instruments when errors were detected within the
Science Data Formatter. An attempt to reset the formatter and obtain a dump
of the payload computer’s memory was unsuccessful.

Additional testing demonstrates Side A no longer supports the transfer
of science data to the ground. A transition to the redundant Side B should
restore full functionality to the science instruments and operations.

The transition to Side B operations is complex. It requires that five
other modules used in managing data also be switched to their B-side
systems. The B-sides of these modules last were activated during ground
tests in the late 1980’s and/or early 1990, prior to launch.

The Hubble operations team has begun work on the Side B transition and
believes it will be ready to reconfigure Hubble later this week. The
transition will happen after the team completes a readiness review.

Hubble could return to science operations in the immediate future if
the reconfiguration is successful. Even so, the agency is investigating the
possibility of flying a back-up replacement system, which could be
installed during the servicing mission.

SOURCE NASA

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