The main camera on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope stopped working Tuesday after suffering a “hardware problem” — a setback for the 29-year-old observatory that comes as the federal government shutdown nears the three-week mark.
Hubble — credited with altering humankind’s understanding of the solar system and how it formed during its almost three decades orbiting Earth — will continue conducting experiments with its other instruments, NASA’s Hubble team said in a tweet late Tuesday night. It’s not clear when the camera will be working again.
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A three sentence news release posted on NASA’s website Tuesday stated that the camera problem is being investigated. But the majority of NASA employees are not working because of the shutdown that started Dec. 22. As President Donald Trump holds firm on his demand that Congress fund a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, about 16,700 space agency personnel — or 96 percent of the workforce — are impacted by the budgetary impasse.
“This is when everyone gets a reminder about two crucial aspects of space exploration,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, tweeted Wednesday morning of the downed camera. “1) complex systems like @NASAHubble only work due to a dedicated team of amazing experts; 2) all space systems have finite life-times and such issues are bound to happen from time to time.”
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Hubble was launched in 1990 and is equipped with two primary camera systems. The camera that went down, known as Wide Field Camera 3, was installed in 2009 and provides “wide-field imagery in ultraviolet, visible and infrared light,” according to NASA’s website.
“WFC3 probes deeper into infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths, providing a more complete view of the cosmos,” the website notes.
The camera will have to be fixed by personnel on the ground because NASA astronauts have no way of getting to the telescope for repairs. Their ability to service the telescope — which they did five times between 1993 and 2009 — ended in 2011, when the Space Shuttle program was shuttered.
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This is the second major problem Hubble has experienced in the past three months. The first, in October, occurred when one of the telescope’s six gyroscopes failed. The gyroscopes keep the telescope pointed accurately for extended periods of time as it sends data back to scientists studying space.
It took NASA personnel on the ground three weeks to fix the problem.
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Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, also is experiencing difficulties.
Initially expected to launch in 2007 and cost $500 million, Webb has been delayed until March 2021 — assuming it gets congressional approval to continue after development costs breached the $8 billion cap set in 2011. NASA estimates it now needs $9 billion.
Webb is meant to revolutionize the world's understanding of planet and star formation.
Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.
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