The Hubble Space Telescope he resumed his routine operations, returning to doing science. It entered safe mode on May 24, due to one of its three currently active gyroscopes, devices that measure the telescope’s rotation speed and are part of its pointing system.
Over the past six months, Hubble had entered safe mode several times, interrupting its activities, due to this faulty gyroscope, which was returning erroneous readings. Last June 4, during a teleconference, NASA announced that it wanted to deactivate this device and keep Hubble “alive” with a new single-gyro operating modeplus a spare.
The transition to this mode was successful and the telescope and its instruments are now stable and functioning normally.
pros and cons
Of the six gyroscopes installed during the Space Shuttle’s last service mission in 2009, only three were still operational as of a couple of weeks ago. Hubble used all of them to maximize efficiency, but was able to continue making scientific observations even with just one gyroscope.
NASA had already developed this plan more than 20 years ago. Hubble had also previously operated in two-gyro mode, which is slightly different from one-gyro mode, from 2005 to 2009. Single-gyro operations were demonstrated for a short time in 2008, however, without any impact on the quality of scientific observation.
What changes, however, is that Hubble will be slowed down. It will need more time to aim and lock onto a scientific and non-scientific objective will have the same flexibility as to where it can observe at a given moment. Furthermore, it will not be able to track moving objects closer than Mars.
The transition has foreseen the reconfiguration of the spacecraft and the Earth system. Now that everything has gone well and Hubble is operating in one-gyroscope mode, the hope is that this space observatory that we have all grown fond of will continue to make new discoveries alongside other observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the future Nancy Grace Roman.
Meanwhile, the team will continue to monitor the problematic gyroscope to see if it stabilizes and can be used again in the future.
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