AGL 40.00 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
AIRLINK 129.06 Decreased By ▼ -0.47 (-0.36%)
BOP 6.75 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (1.05%)
CNERGY 4.49 Decreased By ▼ -0.14 (-3.02%)
DCL 8.55 Decreased By ▼ -0.39 (-4.36%)
DFML 40.82 Decreased By ▼ -0.87 (-2.09%)
DGKC 80.96 Decreased By ▼ -2.81 (-3.35%)
FCCL 32.77 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
FFBL 74.43 Decreased By ▼ -1.04 (-1.38%)
FFL 11.74 Increased By ▲ 0.27 (2.35%)
HUBC 109.58 Decreased By ▼ -0.97 (-0.88%)
HUMNL 13.75 Decreased By ▼ -0.81 (-5.56%)
KEL 5.31 Decreased By ▼ -0.08 (-1.48%)
KOSM 7.72 Decreased By ▼ -0.68 (-8.1%)
MLCF 38.60 Decreased By ▼ -1.19 (-2.99%)
NBP 63.51 Increased By ▲ 3.22 (5.34%)
OGDC 194.69 Decreased By ▼ -4.97 (-2.49%)
PAEL 25.71 Decreased By ▼ -0.94 (-3.53%)
PIBTL 7.39 Decreased By ▼ -0.27 (-3.52%)
PPL 155.45 Decreased By ▼ -2.47 (-1.56%)
PRL 25.79 Decreased By ▼ -0.94 (-3.52%)
PTC 17.50 Decreased By ▼ -0.96 (-5.2%)
SEARL 78.65 Decreased By ▼ -3.79 (-4.6%)
TELE 7.86 Decreased By ▼ -0.45 (-5.42%)
TOMCL 33.73 Decreased By ▼ -0.78 (-2.26%)
TPLP 8.40 Decreased By ▼ -0.66 (-7.28%)
TREET 16.27 Decreased By ▼ -1.20 (-6.87%)
TRG 58.22 Decreased By ▼ -3.10 (-5.06%)
UNITY 27.49 Increased By ▲ 0.06 (0.22%)
WTL 1.39 Increased By ▲ 0.01 (0.72%)
BR100 10,445 Increased By 38.5 (0.37%)
BR30 31,189 Decreased By -523.9 (-1.65%)
KSE100 97,798 Increased By 469.8 (0.48%)
KSE30 30,481 Increased By 288.3 (0.95%)

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.