NASA approves Hubble Space revival plan

Photography by Tomitheos©


Updated 4:44 p.m. ET, Wed., Oct. 15, 2008:
Circuit switchover could get data flowing again by Friday, managers say...

NASA is going ahead with a plan to restart the flow of science data from the Hubble Space Telescope by routing around circuitry that failed a little more than two weeks ago, officials said Tuesday.

The unprecedented switchover is due to begin early Wednesday, and if all goes well, the telescope should be beaming imagery back down to Earth by Friday, said Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Space Telescope Systems Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Last month's glitch forced the postponement of the shuttle Atlantis' servicing mission to the world's best-known space observatory. That mission had been due for launch on Tuesday, but it's now been put off until next February at the earliest. Whipple said the plan for that orbital service call was "still being hashed out."

The operation planned for this week will be done entirely by remote control, from Hubble's operations center on the Goddard campus in Maryland. Controllers will switch Hubble's command and data handling system from the channel it was using, known as Side A, to a backup channel called Side B.

Whipple said NASA's experts were confident that Side A was the source of the glitch that cut off the flow of science data. "As far as we can tell, nothing else was affected," he told journalists during a teleconference Tuesday.

Over the past couple of weeks, teams at Goddard have been testing a spare data-handling unit and checking diagnostics from the telescope to make sure the plan for the switchover was solid. The electronic components on Side B have never been used before during Hubble's 18 years of operation, and it's not certain that they will work this time.

"It is a complicated procedure, and it's one that we have not done end to end before," Whipple said. But he said experts determined that even under the worst-case scenario — for example, if there were a hidden flaw in the Side B electronics — the telescope would not be left in worse shape than it is now.

In order to do the switchover, controllers at Goddard will have to put the telescope into safe mode, issue commands to reroute circuitry through Side B rather than Side A, then return the telescope to its operating condition.

"This is something that is a little out of the norm of what you would do around the house, but it's probably not unlike what an IT professional might do with an office network," Whipple said.

"The difference is, on the ground, you tend to power things on and off and reconfigure by pushing buttons and swapping cables," he said. "Since we can't do that, of course, with something in space, there are ... switches that do the functional equivalent of swapping cables, and remotely commanded relays that allow us to send a command and power something on or off."


MSNBC Science editor Alan Boyle said that In all, 40 to 50 people will be involved in the operation. "People will be working 24/7 for the total time here," said Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division in NASA Headquarters' Science Mission Directorate.

The most critical time in the switchover will last from about 8:30 to 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, Whipple said. If the recovery is successful, the first data should be received from one science instrument late Thursday, with full operation restored on Friday, he said.

The very first image is due to show an internal lamp that is part of the apparatus for Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, which is currently inoperative due to an earlier glitch.

"Nothing could be aesthetically less pleasing," Whipple said, "but it will be a great relief to everyone when we see that flat field illuminated by that internal lamp."

Hubble's managers expect that the first science instrument to be revived would be the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, which has produced some of the telescope's most famous images in the visible-light spectrum. Another imaging device, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, could come back into service later.

The big upgrade for the telescope, involving the installation of two new instruments and the hoped-for repair of two others, will have to wait until Atlantis gets off the ground. NASA would also send up the spare command and data-handling unit for installation as a replacement part, assuming that the unit passes its ground testing. The telescope would continue to use Side B on the replacement unit, Whipple said.

He said experts may not know exactly why Side A on the current unit suddenly went bad until the apparatus is brought back down to Earth for analysis. But he wouldn't rule out a diagnosis that the normal wear and tear experienced during 18 years of use led to the breakdown.

Whippie closed by saying: "Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever."

Our theories on our Universe may be full of holes..

Photo Credit / Graphics by Tomitheos©


Astronomers have claimed to have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies, and gas, and the mysterious, unseen "dark matter." Which has become a questionable presence, while earlier studies have shown holes, or voids, in the large-scale structure of the Universe, this relatively new discovery dwarfs them all.

"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick, along with Shea Brown and Liliya R. Williams, also of the University of Minnesota, reported their findings in a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

Astronomers have known for years that, on large scales, the Universe has voids largely empty of matter. However, most of these voids are much smaller than the one found by Rudnick and his colleagues. In addition, the number of discovered voids decreases as the size increases.

"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe," Williams said.

The astronomers drew their conclusion by studying data from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), a project that imaged the entire sky visible to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, part of the National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). Their careful study of the NVSS data showed a remarkable drop in the number of galaxies in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus.

"We already knew there was something different about this spot in the sky," Rudnick said. The region had been dubbed the "WMAP Cold Spot," because it stood out in a map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe (WMAP) satellite, launched by NASA in 2001. The CMB, faint radio waves that are the remnant radiation from the Big Bang, is the earliest "baby picture" available of the Universe. Irregularities in the CMB show structures that existed only a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.

The WMAP satellite measured temperature differences in the CMB that are only millionths of a degree. The cold region in Eridanus was discovered in 2004.

Astronomers wondered if the cold spot was intrinsic to the CMB, and thus indicated some structure in the very early Universe, or whether it could be caused by something more nearby through which the CMB had to pass on its way to Earth. Finding the dearth of galaxies in that region by studying NVSS data resolved that question.

"Although our surprising results need independent confirmation, the slightly colder temperature of the CMB in this region appears to be caused by a huge hole devoid of nearly all matter roughly 6-10 billion light-years from Earth," Rudnick said.

How does a lack of matter cause a cooler temperature in the Big Bang's remnant radiation as seen from Earth?

Photons of the CMB gain a small amount of energy when they pass through a region of space populated by matter. This effect is caused by the enigmatic "dark energy" that is accelerating the expansion of the Universe. This gain in photon energy makes the CMB appear slightly warmer in that direction. When the photons pass through an empty void, they lose a small amount of energy from this effect, and so the CMB radiation passing through such a region appears cooler.

The acceleration of the Universe's expansion, and thus dark energy, were discovered less than a decade ago. The physical properties of dark energy are unknown, though it is by far the most abundant form of energy in the Universe today. Learning its nature is one of the most fundamental current problems in astrophysics.

Human Spaceflights - Space tourism and time travel is a reality

XCOR Aerospace began test firing a fairly new jet design concept, this Methane Rocket Engine is to overcome some of the engineering challenges. This XCOR spacecraft named Lynx is a rocket ship type plane capable of sub-orbital flight to altitudes more than 60 kilometers above the ground.

By definition this rocket engine is to lift the sub-orbital craft to a spaceflight altitude higher than 100 kilometers above sea level.

Sub-orbital tourist flights will initially focus on attaining the altitude required to qualify as 'reaching space.' The take-off flight will be a highly juiced g-force ride, either vertical or very steep and landing very much like a plane or shuttle. The spacecraft will probably shut off its engines well before reaching maximum altitude and then coasting up to its highest point. Those few minutes from where the engines shut off to the point where the atmosphere begins to slow down the downward acceleration, the passengers will experience true 'weightlessness.'

The XCOR Lynx being launched in Mojave California today; the spacecraft is expected to be scheduling regular flights by 2010.

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Astronauts test handyman robot

Photo Credit / Graphics by Tomitheos© International space station's giant new handyman robot got its first checkup this past Sunday, with astronauts and flight controllers testing its electronics, joints and brakes.
The Canadian-built robot, named Dextre, passed all but one of the tests. One of the wrist joint brakes in Dextre's left arm slipped a tiny bit more than engineers wanted, but Canada's acting space station program manager said he wasn't too concerned. The brakes help hold the arm steady.

"In the long term it's not going to affect the operation of Dextre in any significant way," Pierre Jean said.

Astronauts and flight controllers planned to test the brake a couple more times in hopes that it slips less as it gets more worn in, Jean said.

Two astronauts plan to take a spacewalk Monday night to add a tool holster and other accouterments for Dextre. When the robot is fully assembled, it will stand 12 feet and have a mass of 3,400 pounds.

Dextre — short for dexterous and pronounced like Dexter — is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts and possibly someday take over some of the tougher chores, like lugging around big replacement parts.

Two astronauts installed Dextre's two 11-foot arms during an overnight spacewalk that lasted into the wee hours of Sunday.

Dextre has seven joints per arm and can pivot at the waist. Its hands, or grippers, have built-in socket wrenches, cameras and lights. Only one arm is designed to move at a time to keep the robot stable and avoid a two-arm collision. The robot has no face or legs.

Space station astronauts will be able to control Dextre, as will flight controllers on the ground. The robot will be attached at times to the end of the space station arm. It is also able to ride by itself along the space station arm's railway.

A total of five spacewalks are planned for Endeavour's nearly two-week visit to the space station, the most ever performed during a joint shuttle-station flight.

While some of the astronauts prepared for Monday night's outing, other crew members stowed equipment that was brought to the station aboard the storage compartment segment of Japan's Kibo lab. That will pave the way for the shuttle Discovery to deliver the $1 billion lab in May.

Photography by Tomitheos

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