Hubble Space Telescope. (Photo: NASA)
On June 13, a computer on board the Hubble Space Telescope, which is used to control the instruments and sensors, failed unexpectedly. However, with the help of retired engineers, NASA managed to get Hubble going again. As a lucky coincidence, it turned out that thanks to a repair mission that was still possible at the time, it was possible to switch to a backup system in March 2009. Now Hubble seems to be fully operational again. Nasa published fresh recordings.
Colliding galaxies and long spiral arms
One of the images is a picture of two colliding galaxies in the southern hemisphere. The other shows a galaxy with three unusually long spiral arms. According to NASA, the recordings were made as part of a research program by Julianne Dalcanton from the University of Washington in Seattle. Other targets for Hubble were globular clusters and northern lights on Jupiter.
Hubble- Images: colliding galaxies (left) and unusually long spiral arms (right). (Photos: NASA, ESA, STScI, Julianne Dalcanton (UW), Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
In the coming weeks and months, Hubble should be busy processing the observation orders that have been running since mid-June. In any case, NASA was initially relieved to have got Hubble up and running again. In total, more than 50 people had worked hundreds of hours on it.
“The Hubble team once again has its resilience and its Can be shown in overcoming the inevitable anomalies that result from the operation of the world-famous telescope in the harsh environment of space, ”said Kenneth Sembach, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which conducts the Hubble scientific operations.
Hubble Space Telescope has been at the start since 1990
Hubble was launched in 1990 – an optical fault in the primary mirror was only repaired over three years later. Originally, the space telescope was only supposed to be active for 15 years. It has now been sending amazing images from space for over 30 years – and has thus changed mankind’s understanding of space. In total, Hubble is said to have made over 1.5 million recordings in the past three decades.
