Failing hardware on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope may lead to less science, officials say, but the space agency isn’t ready to pursue a private repair mission
After more than three decades in orbit, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is showing its age. This image of Hubble was taken by an astronaut aboard the space shuttleon May 19, 2009, shortly after the completion of the shuttle program’s final servicing mission to the orbital observatory.Hubble is still in good health as it orbits at 17,000 miles per hour some 320 miles above Earth, NASA says, but the observatory has been in “safe mode”.
“Operationally, we believe this is our best approach to support Hubble science through this decade and into the next since most of the observations it takes will be completely unaffected by this change,” said Mark Clampin, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, at the press conference.
Yet the one-gyro mode will still place new limits on Hubble’s performance. The observatory will now require more time to seek out any given target, making it more sluggish and reducing the efficiency of scheduling its observations. This sluggishness also means Hubble will now slew too slowly to track objects interior to the orbit of Mars, although Crouse noted such observations historically account for less than 1 percent of the telescope’s work.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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