Hubble Telescope to Enter Single-Gyroscope Mode for Extended Life
TapTechNews June 5th, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that the Hubble Space Telescope will enter the single-gyroscope mode to extend its service life and is expected to operate until 2035. The Hubble Space Telescope using a single gyroscope will take longer to transfer the observation target.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been in operation for more than 30 years, and recently entered the safe mode due to abnormal readings from the gyroscope. The gyroscope is a key component for the Hubble Telescope to aim at the observation target. NASA announced today that the faulty gyroscope cannot be repaired, and this fault has led to only two of its six gyroscopes being available.
However, NASA said at the press conference that this does not mean the Hubble Telescope is about to retire.
The Hubble Telescope has been observing the universe for three decades and will continue to play a role in the coming years, said Mark Clampin, director of the Astrophysics Division and Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, at the press conference.
Over the years, gyroscope problems have been plaguing the Hubble Telescope. From 1993 to 2009, astronauts replaced several gyroscopes through five maintenance tasks. Thanks to these maintenance tasks, although the Hubble Telescope can only install six gyroscopes at a time, it has used a total of 22, of which 9 have failed.
The pointing control system of the Hubble Telescope usually uses three gyroscopes simultaneously and keeps three others as spares. However, the system has a certain redundancy design, and the telescope has also operated in a dual-gyroscope mode before, using other sensors to replace the function of the third gyroscope.
NASA officials said that the single-gyroscope mode is also a viable option, and its performance is almost no different from that of the dual-gyroscope mode. Therefore, Clampin believes that it is the best choice to only use one gyroscope for control and keep another as a spare from now on.
From an operational perspective, we believe this is the best way to support the Hubble Telescope's scientific research in this decade and even the next decade, because most of its observation activities will not be affected by this change, he said.
The Hubble Telescope project manager, Patrick Crouse at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said that the Hubble Telescope is expected to switch to the single-gyroscope mode in mid-June. He added that if there are no accidents, the telescope will still continue to serve for some time.
We updated the reliability assessment of the gyroscopes, assuming that the failed gyroscopes cannot be used anymore. The assessment result shows that the probability of keeping at least one gyroscope working before 2035 is still more than 70%. Therefore, we don't think the Hubble Telescope is about to die, Crouse said.
However, the single-gyroscope mode also brings some limitations. Crouse pointed out that it will take longer when switching the observation target, which may lead to a reduction in observation efficiency by about 12%.
In addition, the Hubble Telescope will also be limited in choosing the area of the sky to observe. Crouse added that it will no longer be able to observe moving targets closer than Mars, but such targets have never been the main observation objects of the Hubble Telescope.
It should be noted that no matter how long the remaining gyroscopes have a service life, it may still be the end of the Hubble Telescope's life in the mid-2030s, when the atmospheric drag may drag the Hubble Telescope into the atmosphere and burn it.
TapTechNews noticed that NASA has studied methods to extend the life of the Hubble Telescope, such as planning to use the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to carry out manned missions to raise the orbit of the Hubble Telescope, but this plan has not been adopted yet. After evaluating the current commercial capabilities, we decided not to implement the orbit-raising plan for now, Clampin said.