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Ned Potter is the science correspondent for ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson." He has reported on such topics as space exploration, the human genome and climate change.
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Hubble Telescope Trouble
September 29, 2008 1:02 PM
Updated: A post from ABC's Gina Sunseri in Houston:
The Hubble Telescope is having trouble downlinking its scientific discoveries to Earth -– its main communication channel has failed, which means for now what Hubble finds can’t be seen by anyone.
As a result, sources tell us engineers and top management at NASA have decided to delay into 2009 the launch of STS-125, the fifth and final space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Telescope. It was already set for October 14th. It may now happen in January or February. Pushing back the date would give them time to load parts to repair the communications channel on the shuttle Atlantis.
Engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland are going to try to fire up Hubble’s backup transmission channel, but it hasn’t been tested since Hubble was launched in 1990.
Atlantis is already bringing up parts to replace broken gyroscopes and failing batteries, and replace and improve key instruments. Equipment to repair the communications link would be added to the mission's manifest. In the meantime, NASA will go ahead in November with STS-126, a mission to add components to the International Space Station.
September 29, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (2)
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Wow, that sucks. I hope they can get the backup transmission channel working. It'd be horrible if all the information gathered is lost. Although, delaying the shuttle mission could bring out more problems that need addressing. I say go up, bring Hubble down, fix it, bring it back up, or donate it to the National Air and Space Museum. But that costs too much. I hope it's fixed.
Posted by: Lawrence | Sep 30, 2008 8:39:41 AM
how wonderful gadget...
Posted by: busby seo test | Nov 10, 2008 1:16:18 AM
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