AGL 42.11 Increased By ▲ 3.57 (9.26%)
AIRLINK 128.60 Decreased By ▼ -0.90 (-0.69%)
BOP 6.20 Increased By ▲ 0.59 (10.52%)
CNERGY 4.05 Increased By ▲ 0.19 (4.92%)
DCL 8.50 Decreased By ▼ -0.23 (-2.63%)
DFML 40.75 Decreased By ▼ -1.01 (-2.42%)
DGKC 87.62 Decreased By ▼ -0.68 (-0.77%)
FCCL 34.25 Decreased By ▼ -0.75 (-2.14%)
FFBL 66.35 Decreased By ▼ -1.00 (-1.48%)
FFL 10.54 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-0.66%)
HUBC 108.61 Decreased By ▼ -0.15 (-0.14%)
HUMNL 14.58 Decreased By ▼ -0.08 (-0.55%)
KEL 4.68 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-1.47%)
KOSM 7.24 Increased By ▲ 0.29 (4.17%)
MLCF 42.50 Increased By ▲ 0.85 (2.04%)
NBP 62.00 Increased By ▲ 2.40 (4.03%)
OGDC 179.76 Decreased By ▼ -3.24 (-1.77%)
PAEL 25.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.50 (-1.9%)
PIBTL 6.05 Increased By ▲ 0.08 (1.34%)
PPL 146.00 Decreased By ▼ -0.70 (-0.48%)
PRL 23.98 Increased By ▲ 0.37 (1.57%)
PTC 16.35 Decreased By ▼ -0.21 (-1.27%)
SEARL 70.39 Increased By ▲ 2.09 (3.06%)
TELE 7.23 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
TOMCL 36.18 Increased By ▲ 0.23 (0.64%)
TPLP 7.83 Decreased By ▼ -0.02 (-0.25%)
TREET 15.59 Increased By ▲ 1.39 (9.79%)
TRG 50.51 Increased By ▲ 0.06 (0.12%)
UNITY 26.91 Increased By ▲ 0.16 (0.6%)
WTL 1.24 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (2.48%)
BR100 9,814 Increased By 8.4 (0.09%)
BR30 29,671 Decreased By -6.8 (-0.02%)
KSE100 92,307 Increased By 2.4 (0%)
KSE30 28,771 Decreased By -68.9 (-0.24%)

A new glitch has shut down the Hubble Space Telescope, dashing NASA's hopes of a speedy recovery from an earlier computer breakdown, officials said on Friday. "The soonest that we would be back doing full science would be late next week," Art Whipple, Hubble manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told reporters during a conference call on Friday.
The space telescope, which orbits about 300 miles (485 km) above Earth, has changed scientists' understanding of the origin, evolution and contents of the universe and delivered unprecedented images of distant galaxies and celestial phenomena.
A computer needed to relay science data to Earth failed three weeks ago, prompting NASA to delay a long-awaited space shuttle servicing mission scheduled for October 14 so that new gear could be prepared to fly. The flight has been rescheduled for February.
On Thursday, engineers successfully switched the observatory over to a backup computer and three instruments had reactivated when the first of two new glitches surfaced. The first involved a power unit on one of Hubble's cameras and the second was a problem with another computer system used by the science instruments. "It's not known if these two events are related," Whipple said. "At this point we are fairly certain it was not a configuration or a commanding error."
Officials said it was too early to say if more work will be needed when astronauts arrive at the observatory for its fifth and final servicing mission. "If we did not have the servicing mission, we would have less options to us available for recovery but we never take that for granted," Whipple said.

Copyright Reuters, 2008

Comments

Comments are closed.