NASA completes extra assessments to diagnose pc challenge on Hubble region telescope

NASA is persevering with to diagnose a challenge with the payload pc on the Hubble Attach Telescope after ending one other region of assessments on June 23 and 24. The payload pc halted on June 13 and the spacecraft stopped gathering science recordsdata. The telescope itself and its science instruments remain in barely correct health and are within the period in-between in a protected configuration.

The spacecraft has two payload computers, with out a doubt one of which serves as a backup, which would be located on the Science Instrument and Teach and Facts Going thru (SI C&DH) unit. There are assorted pieces of hardware which assassinate up both payload computers, including but no longer cramped to:

• a Central Processing Module (CPM), which processes the commands that coordinate and regulate the science instruments
• a Routine Interface (STINT), which bridges communications between the pc‘s CPM and varied system
• a communications bus, which comprises lines that hump signals and knowledge between hardware
• and one stuffed with life memory module, which stores operational commands to the instruments. There are three extra modules which attend as backups.

Further assessments conducted on June 23 and 24 integrated turning on the backup pc for the first time in region. The assessments confirmed that a huge need of combos of these hardware pieces from both the key and backup payload pc all skilled the identical error—commands to put in writing into or read from memory were no longer a success.

Because it’s a ways extremely no longer going that every one person hardware parts hold a challenge, the workforce is now looking out at varied hardware as the that that that you simply would be able to well have confidence perpetrator, including the Teach Unit/Science Facts Formatter (CU/SDF), one other module on the SI C&DH. The CU formats and sends commands and knowledge to particular destinations, including the science instruments. The SDF formats the science recordsdata from the science instruments for transmission to the ground. The workforce is additionally looking out at the vitality regulator to scrutinize if presumably the voltages being supplied to hardware will no longer be what they ought to be. A vitality regulator ensures an exact constant voltage present. If the voltage is out of limits, it’s going to also reason the issues seen.

Over the following week, the workforce will continue to evaluate hardware on the SI C&DH unit to title if something else will likely be inflicting the challenge. If the workforce determines the CU/SDF or the vitality regulator is the likely reason, they’re going to recommend switching to the backup CU/SDF module and the backup vitality regulator.