Yesterday brought bad news for the Hubble Space Telescope mission and good news for the European Space Agency, according to Space.com. The European Space Agency's ATV, the big "garbage truck" carried its load of discards for the ISS back into the atmosphere, where it disintegrated and burned upon reentry into the earth's atmosphere. At some point in the future, ATVs will be modified for reentry so that they can be reused. To quote from the story:
Europe's unmanned space cargo vehicle successfully reentered the atmosphere over the south Pacific Ocean Sept. 29, breaking up into dozens of fragments that fell into the ocean along a pre-selected path that had been cleared of maritime traffic, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.
The Hubble mission has been postponed, according to reporter Tariq Malik, because of a failed data relay system, the essential telescope equipment for transmission of Hubble's imagery to earth. After 18 years, the Side A Science Data Formatter is no longer able to send telescopic data. It will be returned to earth for analysis. It is one-half of a redundant system, for which there is, fortunately, a spare. Side B will need to be switched on via a very complex process. The 18 year old "new"spare will have to be tested for several months before it can replace the failed box.
At this point the Hubble mission looks to be postponed until January or mid-February. This new repair will add only two hours to the already packed Hubble repair schedule. If the spare does not check out, the mission could go in November. Every month of delay adds $10 million to NASA program costs. The launch has already been delayed due to Hurricane Ike and payload delivery issues.
The stand-by shuttle Endeavor will be outfitted to be used for its planned STS-126 mission to the ISS. That mission will deliver the new life support equipment and other supplies in order for the ISS crew to be increased to six members.
Officials point out that it could be much worse. The old equipment could have failed after the repair mission was over. [Weiler] said, "I'm not concerned about this, we'll find a way to get this fixed. Luckily we have the spare."
I will keep you posted.
My topical post today at South by Southwest and The Reaction is about politics.
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