NASA is working hard to repair the Hubble Space Telescope’s computer failure

The Hubble Space Telescope has been showing its age for some time, but a new problem has proved particularly frustrating. As the Associated Press reported, NASA spent almost a week (as of this writing) trying to fix the malfunction in the Hubble payload computer. The system failed on June 13, and the operation and maintenance team restarted the computer on the 14th or switched to a backup memory module without success. On the evening of June 17th, agancey tried to use these two modules many times and failed.

The telescope and its scientific instruments are still in "good health," the agency said, although the operators put the instruments in a safe mode as a precaution.

This isn't the first such glitch this year. NASA spent days reviving Hubble in March following a software error in the main flight computer. It also discovered that the Wide Field Camera 3's voltage levels had dropped over the decades, to the point where team meambers needed to reduce those levels to prevent future problems.

Like that camera, age may play a role in this latest malfunction. Hubble’s payload system uses the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer 1 (NSSC-1) from the 1980s, which includes two computers and four 64K CMOS memory modules. At any given time, only one computer and memory module are in use, but if more than one component fails, this may not matter. In view of this, the James Webb Space Telescope has not arrived fast enough-although it has been advertised as a successor to Hubble, it may be the only option if the old machine continues to fail at this frequency.