LOS ANGELES - Hubble telescope's main camera which had shut down last month, has been successfully restarted by NASA engineers. Officials said the camera should begin taking pictures from tomorrow morning. The Advanced Camera for Surveys had shut operation June 19 due to what was perceived as power and voltage problems.
NASA officials said engineers spend around 10 days studying the problem before switching on the back-up power supply. "The instruments are designed with redundant electronics," said Ed Ruitberg, deputy associate director for the Astrophysics Division at NASA. "We prepared for this type of event. We know these things can happen. We're going to continue operating the telescope efficiently. So, I think it's just a bump in the road that we'll figure out a way to solve." He added that the team was confident of solving the problem and hence they had switched on the backup power supply.
Other instruments on Hubble continued to operate normally even though the ACS was shut down. The camera, which was installed by a shuttle crew in March 2002, is one of Hubble's main "eyes".
Its malfunction has not interrupted anything and the only problem was lost observation time, which NASA was confident, it would be able to make up. "The observations that we did have scheduled last week, and that we would have scheduled this week, will be deferred and the science acquired later," Ruitberg said.
Dave Leckrone, Hubble senior project scientist revealed that the problem with the ACS was akin to "something like on your laptop computer, you have an adapter you plug into the wall and it provides the correct voltage to your power charger on your lap top. It's something like that power adapter."
Hubble is scheduled for a maintenance visit, which Michael Griffin, NASA administrator wants to finish before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010.
