Hubble rescue under way

Engineers at NASA yesterday begun the procedure that should bring the Hubble Space Telescope back to life. The space telescope has been out of action for several weeks now after a failure in the data handling unit that prevented data from being sent back to Earth. Fortunately, a redundant B-unit was designed into the telescope from the outset to prevent single point failures of this kind. In the last few weeks NASA engineers have been working on a plan to carry out the switch to the B-side, which hasn’t been powered on since 1990.

In a news conference last Tuesday, NASA confirmed that their engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center have now tested the command procedures and are confident that they understand how to carry out the switch-over.

The procedure was started on October 15 and is expected to continue through to Friday. Daily reports are being issued on the main Hubble page, and so far everything looks good. Follow the progress here and let’s all keep our fingers crossed for Hubble!