SPACE
NASA's Remote Hubble Fix Does the Trick

Which means that it's out-of-this-world beautiful.

It's also proof that after a month of unexpected, worrisome darkness, Hubble has returned to life.

"Isn't it fabulous?" said Ridgefield planetary astronomer Heidi Hammel, who uses Hubble for her work studying Uranus and Neptune. "I'm really glad to know that."

February Mission

Astronomers will now be able to use this telescope until February, when NASA astronauts will perform their last servicing mission on Hubble, replacing its gyroscopes and batteries, repairing old instruments and installing new ones.

Then astronomers will be able to explore the universe with a new, revived Hubble for at least another five years.

NASA had planned to make the servicing mission to Hubble this month. But those plans were abruptly changed in September when Hubble shut down.

Formatter Flub

There was nothing wrong with the telescope's optical equipment. Instead, a piece of equipment called a "formatter" -- responsible for sending the images to Earth -- failed. Because Hubble is 18 years old, it was not a shock that something on it finally failed.

NASA designed redundant systems into Hubble, as it does with other spacecraft. The duplicate formatter aboard the telescope has been sitting in space since 1990, waiting for its chance to perform.

Slowly, over the past month, NASA engineers got that formatter up and running. Because it is also 18 years old, they had no idea whether it would work.

But this week, they got their answer.

"Hubble is up and running," said Ray Villard. Hubble's news chief.

Villard said Hubble's main camera -- the wide-field camera responsible for its great images -- is now ready to do science. Within a week, its infrared camera should also be working.

Extended Schedule

Villard said NASA was rightfully concerned about switching to the second formatter without damaging other equipment.

"It's like doing a house call 360 miles away," he said.

Astronauts will replace both formatters when they arrive for their servicing mission in February, rather than risk letting them fail again.

Hammel said the normal research calender for Hubble ends this month. But knowing that the telescope is working again, NASA has put out a request for proposals, allowing astronomers to use Hubble from now until the mission.

Hubble orbits the Earth every 97 minutes. Normally, Hammel said, a research team gets to use Hubble for six to 10 orbits. But for the next three months, NASA wants to use the telescope for research that will take much longer -- as many as 50 orbits.

Asked if she and her colleagues will write up a proposal to get some of that time, Hammel laughed.

"Of course," she said.