> Additional tests performed on June 23 and 24 included turning on the backup computer for the first time in space. The tests showed that numerous combinations of these hardware pieces from both the primary and backup payload computer all experienced the same error - commands to write into or read from memory were not successful.
The engineering and circumstances around this are incredible to me. Imagine planning for this possibility decades in advance, experiencing issues and still working through it without sending a single human in to physically investigate.
They did send quite a few humans out to Hubble to work on it, but that doesn't take away from how many other pieces of space equipment are designed that way
Incredible that NASA was able to recover this - they also estimate that they will be able to run many more years still!
> NASA has returned the science instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope to operational status, and the collection of science data will now resume.
> The Hubble team has been investigating the cause of the payload computer problem since it first occurred. On July 15, the team switched the spacecraft to backup hardware.
> NASA anticipates that Hubble will last for many more years and will continue making groundbreaking observations, working in tandem with other space observatories including the James Webb Space Telescope to further our knowledge of the cosmos.
It's crazy to me just how much use we've gotten out of this thing. 31 years old. I hope JWST can provide the same sort of longevity. I wonder if there are similar plans to have it be serviceable / upgradable now that we've regained the ability to put our own astronauts in space recently.
It probably won't ever be serviced or upgraded, for several reasons:
It's orbiting at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point, with a perigee of 374,000 km
While we can put astronauts in space, we don't currently have any orbital vehicles with on-orbit satellite maintenance capabilities, since none of them have airlocks
The latter could very well change over the next few decades though, and the former may become economical, so I guess it can't be entirely ruled out.
But the landscape of the space industry is changing very rapidly. With a fleet of hundreds of reusable rockets floating around, the accessibility of the Hubble may change.
Of course, at that point it might be better to just send up a bigger instrument.
I'm interested in this too. I know the planned mission duration for JWST is just 10 years, but I also wonder if its orbit or something else about the mission parameters will prevent it from lasting as long as Hubble.
"JWST needs to use propellant to maintain its halo orbit around L2, which provides an upper limit to its designed lifetime, and it is being designed to carry enough for ten years. The planned five year science mission begins after a 6-month commissioning phase. An L2 orbit is only meta-stable, so it requires orbital station-keeping, or the telescope will drift away from this orbital configuration." [0]
There's no mention of lifetime for the cryocooler @ [1], but if that thing becomes ineffective for whatever reason (helium refrigerant leak?), I think the telescope becomes somewhat useless.
The engineering and circumstances around this are incredible to me. Imagine planning for this possibility decades in advance, experiencing issues and still working through it without sending a single human in to physically investigate.