NASA/ESA/CXC/MDSC/Mark W. Aitken; NASA/ESA/ATI
At the end of its massively successful run, the Hubble Space Telescope is in a tricky space. In recent months it’s discovered a new supernova in our Milky Way galaxy, and in December scientists discovered a strange moon orbiting a second star.
But it’s not just that Hubble is making progress in new areas of astronomy, but also that the $1.5bn telescope is deteriorating with every new find. That’s because each finding is more radiation and data travelling into Hubble’s barrel. A year ago, Hubble shut down a flash memory unit that could record 2,500 photographs a second.
And that’s before accounting for the 100s of new data Hubble uses up each day, and the 1,800 big data files it takes to find a new comet or comet body. Now, NASA has confirmed that Hubble is “in a state of safe mode”, despite being hit by a total of seven total “spacewaves” or data packets.
The timing of the safe mode suggests that Hubble has suffered a technology failure, but so far NASA has kept quiet on the issue.
Update 5am GMT 10 March 2015: “A total of 15 data packets went out during the space shuttle refurbishment, for a total of 6,205 data packets,” NASA said in a statement. “The spacecraft is in safe mode and the NASA OTH team has begun a thorough inspection. The spacecraft itself has not suffered any damage, and the next routine servicing opportunity for Hubble is set for 2021.”
Update 2.30pm GMT 22 March 2015: NASA has confirmed that the new data loss was caused by “a problem with the event monitoring systems that trigger shut-down and save data”.