ACS Broken
Oh no! The Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) has had some kind of electrical fault on Saturday which put the whole telescope into safe mode. It seems that the ACS may not work again. That is a bit depressing for the astronomers that were expecting observations with it as about two thirds (500) of current proposals for use of the HST need to use the ACS. The other instruments are still working, so Hubble will have to hobble along until the possible servicing mission "no earlier than May 2008".
The Hubble Space Telescope is the highest profile telescope in astronomy and it really needs a servicing mission as soon as possible. Come on NASA, this isn't rocket science. ;-)
Comments: ACS Broken
Last year, i'd had this idea that replacing the perfectly good ACS instrument with some new fangled thing was a poor use of my money. Now, it appears that having a new instrument ready was a brilliant idea - ahead of it's time.
I still think that a space telescope can be built and launched for the price of a single servicing mission. We'd have had one up much sooner than 1990 if it were designed from the start to launch on a cheap launcher. And, launching a new one every five years, we'd have overlap - with two or more in service at a time. âˆ2,000,000,000 will by alot of stuff. But, i've been wrong before.
Posted by Ste[phen on Thursday 01st Feb 2007 (15:45 UTC)