NASA Gives Go To Resuscitate Hubble

NASA aims to start resuscitating Hubble Space Telescope science operations Wednesday by trying to turn on a critical back-up control unit that's been dormant during the observatory's 18 years in orbit.

If the complicated switch works, then the telescope will begin gathering data and capturing iconic images of the universe Friday morning. But if it doesn't, Hubble will only be able to do a small amount of esoteric science called astrometry until astronauts can service the observatory.

"I'm personally very confident. The Hubble team is an extraordinary group of men and women and they are at their absolute best when faced with something like this," said Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Space Telescope Systems Management Office at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "By Friday, I think everybody will be just elated to see the science data flowing again."

Senior NASA science administrators gave a go-ahead for the switchover at the conclusion of a meeting this morning at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

So a team of 40 to 50 Hubble engineers and scientists will gather in the Space Telescope Operations Control Center at Goddard Wednesday morning to begin a tedious two-day effort to power up the telescope's back-up instrument control and data formatting unit.

Five other back-up electronics units will have to be pressed into service in the process, which will involve beaming hundreds of commands to the observatory.

A back-up spacecraft computer that's never been operated also will be turned on during a sequence as challenging as any simulated in notoriously difficult training exercises on the ground. But ground controllers have spent the last two weeks determining how to carry out the switchover.

"It is a complicated procedure, and it is one we have not done end-to-end before," Whipple said. "It's primarily the uniqueness and the length of the commanding that leads us to go through so much preparation and testing."

Jon Morse, director of NASA astrophysics division, said the Hubble team would be working round-the-clock to complete all the commanding and restart science observations within 48 hours.

If the switch doesn't work, then the telescope's wide field planetary camera and other main instruments would be out of commission until a spare control and data formatting unit could be delivered aboard shuttle Atlantis and installed by a seven-member servicing crew in February.

Only astrometry -- the science of measuring an object's position in space -- could be done with the telescope's Fine Guidance Sensor because it doesn't depend on the control and data formatting unit to gather and beam back data.

Said Whipple: "If we had to, we would fill the schedule with as much fine guidance sensor science as we could."

NOTE ON IMAGES: Click to enlarge and save the NASA images of the Hubble Space Telescope taken by the STS-109 crew in 2002 -- the last time astronauts serviced the observatory. You cn also click the enlarged image to get even bigger views. Photo credits: STS-109 crew.