NASA engineers will try today to bring the out-of-commission Hubble Space Telescope back on line by switching to a backup system on a piece of equipment that relays science data from the telescope to Earth.
The science data formatter, which gathers information from the various instruments aboard the space telescope and packages it for delivery, broke down late last month.
The failure forced the postponement of a repair mission to the 18-year-old space telescope, which was already suffering from technical problems that limited its ability to gather new data.
After studying the latest problem for two weeks, engineers announced Tuesday that they would go ahead with the switch to an identical backup system.
Engineers are uncertain whether the backup formatter, which has sat dormant in space for almost two decades, will work.
If it doesn’t, the telescope will be out of commission at least until the rescheduled repair mission launches, which could be in February.
Los Angeles Times
