Tomorrow NASA engineers will begin a challenging remote-control fix of the malfunctioning Hubble Space Telescope; if all goes well, the Hubble should regain the capacity to send breathtaking stellar images back to Earth by Friday. The breakdown of a data-handling computer two weeks ago left the telescope crippled and unable to send data from its instruments; it also
caused NASA to postpone its Hubble upgrade mission from October to sometime next February or so. The delay is costing NASA about $10 million a month, officials said [AP].
The fix requires powering down the entire telescope into "safe mode" and then turning on a backup data-handling system that has never been activated in the Hubble's 18 years of space flight. Says Hubble manager Art Whipple:
"It's probably not unlike what an IT professional might do with an office network" [BBC News].
While NASA officials say there's always a chance that the ...
