NASA - Hubble Space Telescope updates

[jacqmans]

MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-058

HUBBLE DETECTS ORGANIC MOLECULE ON AN EXTRASOLAR PLANET

WASHINGTON - NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on
Wednesday, March 19, to report on the first-ever detection of the
organic molecule methane in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a
distant star.

Though the planet is too hot to support life as we know it, the
finding demonstrates the ability to detect organic molecules
spectroscopically around Earth-like planets in habitable zones around
stars.

Briefing participants are:
- Dr. Mark Swain, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
- Dr. Sara Seager, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

This unique discovery, made with Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and
Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), will be featured in the March 20
issue of the journal Nature.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact Ray
Villard at 410-338-4514 or Cheryl Gundy at 410-338-4707 at the Space
Telescope Science Institute by noon on March 19 for the call-in
number and passcode. At the start of the briefing, images and
supporting graphics will be posted on the Web at:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/11

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA's Web site
at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

For more information about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on the Web,
visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

[jacqmans]

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough is an important step in eventually identifying signs of life on a planet outside our Solar System.

More at:
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMTZ1N5NDF_index_0.html

[jacqmans]

Galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures, as 59 new images from the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope show.


More at:

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMCSESZEFF_index_0.html

[jacqmans]

RELEASE: 08-204

HUBBLE UNVEILS COLORFUL STAR BIRTH REGION ON 100,000TH ORBIT

WASHINGTON -- In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
completing its 100,000th orbit during its 18th year of exploration
and discovery, scientists aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a
dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal.

Hubble peered into a small portion of the Tarantula nebula near the
star cluster NGC 2074. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar
creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies
about 170,000 light-years away and is one of the most active
star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies.

The image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head
"pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under
torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark
molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars.

The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars
is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly eroding it away.
Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of brilliant
blue gas.

In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark
towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of
the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is
approximately 20 light-years long, roughly four times the distance
between our sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of our Milky
Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing
star-formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the
Large Magellanic Cloud are considered to be the primitive building
blocks of larger galaxies.

"This morning, the greatest scientific instrument since Galileo's
telescope has reached another great milestone - its 100,000th orbit
around the Earth," stated Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md.,
chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations
Subcommittee that funds NASA. "Hubble has given us amazing insight
into the origins of our universe, and I'm so proud of the men and
women at Goddard and the Space Telescope Science Institute for their
contributions and dedication to these great discoveries. The entire
world is looking forward to the Hubble servicing mission in October
2008, when Hubble will get new scientific instruments, new batteries
and new gyroscopes. The servicing mission will extend Hubble's life
and give it a more powerful view of our universe. Hubble is the
telescope that could, and its best years are ahead of it!"

NASA is preparing the fifth and final Hubble servicing mission. In
October, shuttle astronauts will take new instruments, gyros,
batteries, and other components to enable the telescope's continued
success through the year 2013.

To see the photo taken during Hubble's 100,000th orbit of Earth,
visit:



http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

[jacqmans]

The Hubble Space Telescope has found the answer to a long-standing puzzle by seeing the details of giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275.

Read more at:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMM707UWJF_index_0.html

[Felix]

more details:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=43284

[tankmodeler]

OK, that rocks.

Yeah, it's trite, but it's pretty hard to put into human language what that photo represents.

Paul

[jacqmans]

MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-200

NASA TO PROVIDE UPDATE TO HUBBLE ANOMALY STATUS

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EDT,
Tuesday, Oct. 14, to brief reporters about the status of efforts to
revive the data handling unit that failed on the Hubble Space
Telescope in late-September. The failure halted almost all science
operations on the orbiting observatory.

A meeting will be held at NASA Headquarters on Tuesday morning to
review plans for transitioning operations to the redundant "B" side
of Hubble's data handling unit. This equipment has not been used or
tested since Hubble's launch in 1990. If approved, ground controllers
could begin the process of sending commands to Hubble as early as
Wednesday, Oct. 15, to begin the transition. The process could take
as long as 48 hours to complete.

The briefing participants are:
- Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director in the Science Mission
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
- Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Space Telescope Systems
Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters in the U.S. should
call 1-866-556-1095 and use the pass code "Hubble." International
reporters should call 1-212-547-0420.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:



http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

[MB123]

OK, that rocks.

Yeah, it's trite, but it's pretty hard to put into human language what that photo represents.

Paul

Yeah, I've always thought that too about alot of the Hubble imagery. It stretches the mind.

[AnalogMan]

NASA TO PROVIDE UPDATE TO HUBBLE ANOMALY STATUS

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EDT,
Tuesday, Oct. 14, to brief reporters about the status of efforts to
revive the data handling unit that failed on the Hubble Space
Telescope in late-September.

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

For those interested this should be starting in one hour's time

[jacqmans]

 Oct. 15, 2008

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.                 3:30 p.m. EDT

301-286-7745 / 0697

HUBBLE STATUS UPDATE #1

The Hubble Space Telescope team completed switching the required hardware modules to their B-sides about 9:30 a.m. this morning and received telemetry that verified they had good data.  Everything at this point looks good.

The 486 computer on Hubble was reloaded with data around Noon and successfully performed a data dump back to the ground to verify all the loads were proper. At 1:10 p.m. this afternoon the team brought Hubble out of safe mode and placed the 486 computer back in control.  Late this afternoon, Gyro #4 (which was needed for safe mode) will be turned off.

The team will reconfigure Side B of the Science Instrument Command &Data Handling (SIC & DH) computer later today and verify it is functioning properly. 

Around 6 p.m. this evening the spacecraft will begin executing a pre-science command load, which involves sending normal commands to control the spacecraft and resume communications satellite tracking with the HST high gain antennas.

“We won’t know if we’ve been completely successful until around midnight Wednesday when we demonstrate that the SI C&DH Side B is talking to the instruments and able to pass data to the ground,” said HST Operations Deputy Project Manager Keith Kalinowski at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

[jacqmans]

Hubble Status Report #2                                      October 16, 2008

 

During the night of Oct. 15, Space Telescope Operations Control Center engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center turned on and checked out Side ‘B’ of Hubble’s Science Instrument Control and Data Handling (SI C&DH) system. 

 

Subsequently, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) instruments were retrieved from safe mode to establish that each has a working interface to the Side B SI C&DH. The instruments were then commanded back into safe mode, and will remain in that state until the SI C&DH begins issuing commands to them later today.

 

Around Noon today commands to recover Hubble’s science instruments from their safe modes will begin and internal exposures and calibrations of the telescope’s science instruments will occur before midnight Thursday. 

 

Scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore should complete their review of the internal exposures by Noon on Friday, October 17. This procedure involves collecting and comparing baseline exposures previously supported by Side A of the SI C&DH to new exposures supported by Side B.  This review will be one last check of the “transparency” (non-impact) of switching to the redundant spacecraft electronics the Hubble team activated on Wednesday.

 

A full schedule of science observations with the WFPC2 camera, ACS’ Solar Blind Channel camera, and the Fine Guidance Sensors will resume early Friday morning. 

[jacqmans]

HST STATUS #3
Friday, October 17, 2008

HUBBLE SCIENCE OPERATIONS DEFERRED WHILE ENGINEERS EXAMINE NEW ISSUES

Activation of Hubble Space Telescope science instruments and resumption of science observations has been suspended following two anomalies seen in systems onboard the telescope yesterday.

The first event occurred at approximately 1:40 PM on Thursday when the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) suspended operations due to indication that one power source in the Solar Blind Camera’s low voltage power supply failed to turn on. This was the first turn on of the Solar Blind Camera since its last use prior to the safing of HST’s NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer, version 1 (NSSC-1) on 9/27. (The NSSC-1 is Hubble’s science computer.) The Solar Blind Channel is the only part of ACS in use since a power failure in January 2007 halted most ACS science observations.

An initial status briefing to discuss the ACS issue began at 5 p.m. on Thursday. During the briefing, at 5:14 PM, a still-undiagnosed problem affecting the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) system caused the NSSC-1 to stop issuing its keep-alive signal.  The Hubble spacecraft computer (HST486) detected the cessation of the keep-alive signal as a failure of its Processor Interface Table (PIT) toggle test.  The absence of the keep-alive signal for twenty seconds told the HST486 to issue commands to safe HST’s science computer and science instruments.

The first step taken in investigating the NSSC-1 safing was to collect a memory dump. This dump was success. The data shows that yesterday’s anomaly is likely different from the one that occurred on Sept. 27.
 
Initial indications point to a potential problem in the B-side of the Computer Processing Module (CPM-B). The CPM-B had not been used on orbit prior to Wednesday evening’s activation of Side B of the Science Instrument Control  & Data Handling (SIC&DH) unit.

The spacecraft computer is continuing to execute command loads sent to it from the Space Telescope Operations Control Center (STOCC) at GSFC, and all of its subsystems are nominal.

The investigation is continuing. Contingency procedures for a potential switch to a hybrid SI C&DH configuration that would use portions of its Side A and portions of its Side B were tested this morning in HST Program’s Vehicle Electrical System Test (VEST) Facility, a high fidelity mock-up of Hubble that resides in a cleanroom at Goddard.

NASA managers are expected to meet around 1:30 p.m. today to assess the telescope's current status and discuss future actions.

A telecon for news media representatives is tentatively planned for 3 p.m. today. A media advisory with details was issued by the NASA Headquarters newsroom earlier today

[rdale]

HSTARS:

11539 - ACS suspended during High Voltage turn on and SBC transition

ACS suspended with status buffer messages ACS 715, parameter 166, and ACS 707, parameter 0, both occurring at time 61165 corresponding to a time of 17:40:16.625. Solar Blind Camera MAMA High Voltage turn on was in progress at that time.

11540 - NSSC-1 safed.

Upon acquisition of signal at 290/21:17:11 the NSSC-1 had safed. Two 486 ESB messages "D24" (SICDH_TOGGLE_TEST_FAIL) and "D01"(SAFE_HLD_MACROS_ACTIVE_INFO) were received at 290/21:14:29. SCDHSAFA (Safing Macro Active), SDSTOGF (Toggle Failure Counter), SSiCDHT (SIC&DH Toggle OK Flag), and SSIPTBE (PIT Toggle Test) flags were set.

COMPLETED OPS REQUEST:

18329-0 - NSSC-1 Pointer for Science SMS Intercept @ 290/1406z
18332-3 - Dump ACS Memory @ 290/1939z
18333-1 - NSSC-1 HW Memory Dump @ 290/2213z


SIGNIFICANT EVENTS:

Flash Report :

HST Status as of Thursday evening 291/00:00: At 290/17:40:16 UTC, ACS suspended due to the Solar Blind Camera MAMA low voltage power supply apparently not coming up properly. At 290/21:14 the NSSC-1 halted. The halting resulted in the HST486 SIC&DH PIT toggle test failing twenty seconds later safing the payload with the execution of SMAC20.

[jacqmans]

Hubble Status Report #4                                                  October 17, 2008

On Wednesday, October 14, engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reconfigured six components of the Hubble Data Management System and five components in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SIC &DH) system to use their redundant (or B) sides. This was done to work around a failure that occurred on September 27 in the Side A Science Data Formatter in the SIC&DH and resulted in the cessation of all science observations except for astrometry with the Fine Guidance Sensors. 

The reconfiguration proceeded nominally and Hubble resumed the science timeline at Noon ET on Thursday, October 16. The first activities out of that on-board science timeline were the commanding of the science instruments from their safe to operate modes. This occurred nominally for Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi Object Spectrometer.  However, an anomaly occurred during the last steps of the commanding to the Advanced Camera for Surveys. At 1:40 pm, when the low voltage power supply to the ACS Solar Blind Channel was commanded on, software running in a microprocessor in ACS detected an incorrect voltage level in the Solar Blind Channel and suspended ACS. Then at 5:14 pm, the Hubble spacecraft computer sensed the loss of a "keep alive" signal from the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer in the SIC&DH and correctly responded by safing the NSSC-I and the science instruments. It is not yet known if these two events were related.

The investigation into both anomalies is underway. All data has been collected and is being analyzed. The science instruments will remain in safe mode until the NSSC-I issue is resolved. All other subsystems on the spacecraft are performing nominally and astrometry observations continue.

[rdale]

Hubble Status Report #5
Oct. 21, 2008

On Monday, October 20, engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center met to discuss their next steps toward resolving two anomalies which caused the B-side of the Science Instrument Control and Data Handling System (SI C&DH-B) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Solar Blind Channel (SBC) to return to a ‘safe hold’ status on October 16. Following that meeting, an Independent Review Team (IRT) chaired by the Director of the Wallops Flight Facility also met. The near-term focus of the HST Program’s efforts and the IRT’s efforts will be to assess the risks of activities needed to resume making observations with HST’s three functioning science instruments prior to Servicing Mission 4. The next meeting of the full IRT will occur on October 22.

[rdale]

Next Hubble Telescope Media Teleconference Thursday, Oct. 23
 
 
WASHINGTON -- NASA will provide an update to reporters on the current efforts to restore Hubble Space Telescope science observations during a media teleconference on Thursday, Oct. 23, at 2 p.m. EDT.

The briefing participants are:
- Jon Morse, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington
- Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Systems Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

To participate in the conference, reporters in the U.S. should call 1-888-469-0494 and use the pass code "Hubble." International reporters should call 1-415-228-3905.

A recorded replay of the teleconference will be available approximately one hour after the conclusion of the call by dialing 1-888-566-0499. International callers can hear the replay by calling 1-203-369-3057.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

[jacqmans]

HST Status Report #6                                                            October 23, 2008

The Hubble Space Telescope Science Instrument Control and Data Handling system was reactivated on Thursday, October 23. This should enable Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 science observations to resume on Saturday, October 25. The Advanced Camera for Surveys Solar Blind Channel science observations should resume later next week.

Additional background:

The Independent Review Team , chaired by Wallops Flight Facility director John Campbell, and the HST Program reported their assessment to Goddard management yesterday. 

The review team primarily studied the sudden halt of the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 which occurred on October 16, along with the apparent failure during turn-on of the camera’s Low Voltage Power Supply earlier that same day.

The team concluded that a hardware problem did not occur on the camera.  The anomaly was because of a limit-checking algorithm that triggered before the data that it was checking was valid. A commanding change on the instrument will eliminate this condition and both teams expect a nominal Low Voltage Power Supply turn-on when it is commanded on next week. 

Regarding the sudden halt of the spacecraft computer, the team concluded that three separate events occurring with near-simultaneity were responses to a single triggering event.  The triggering event was most likely caused by a self-clearing short-circuit, or a transient open-circuit, in the Science Instrument Control and Data Handling system.  One or more such events would not be highly improbable in hardware inactive since 1990, and will not harm the telescope, although it could cause another interruption of science operations.

Based on these latest findings, Goddard Center management and NASA HQ concurred with the HST team’s plan to power on the spacecraft computer and then monitor it for about 24-hours to assess its operations. 

Another status report will be issued following resumption of planetary camera science on Saturday.

[rdale]

Hubble Status Report #7
10.25.08
 
The current primary camera on the Hubble Space Telescope is now back in active operation and will resume science observations shortly.

Just before 9:30 a.m. EDT this morning on board Hubble, the telescope's science computer began to send commands to Wide Field Planetary Camera-2. These commands brought the computer out of the quiescent, safe state in which it has waited since the computer shut down on October 16.

Additional commanding allowed engineers on the ground to assess the instrument's state of health and verify the contents of the camera's microprocessor memory. All systems are poised to begin acquiring science data later today.

The first observations made will be for data calibration purposes. The team at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which manages Hubble science, expects to release an image late next week.

[rdale]

Flash Report: WFPC2 Recovery Complete

The WFPC2 recovery via SMS is complete. The WFPC2 mechanisms recovery was performed. ROP NS-16 was executed to verify the RAM and PROM dumps. CCD Auto-erase was initiated, TEC power enabled, and TEC set-points were set via the SMS, completing ~299/19:41.

Science activity for WFPC2 resumes at 299/21:46 with a series of internal observations such as Bias and Internal Flats. The first external image is commanded at 299/22:57.