Are We Watching the Slow Decline of an Old but Useful Friend?

Yesterday NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute announced that the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph had been shut down due to failure of electronic parts. Here’s the announcement:

One of four science instruments aboard NASA’s Hubble’s Space Telescope suspended operations earlier this week, and engineers are now looking into possible recovery options.

The instrument, called the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), was installed during the second Hubble servicing mission in 1997 and was designed to operate for five years. It has either met or exceeded all its scientific requirements.

Hubble’s other instruments, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), the Advanced Camera for Surveys, and the Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2 are all operating normally.

The STIS instrument, which went into a suspended mode Tuesday, was not slated for replacement or upgrade as part of any future servicing mission.

NASA has convened an Anomaly Review Board to investigate the cause of the STIS problem and an investigation is underway to determine if the instrument is recoverable.

Preliminary findings indicate a problem with the +5V DC-DC power converter on Side 2, which supplies power to the mechanism’s electronics. STIS suffered a similar electrical malfunction in 2001 that rendered Side 1 inoperable.

A final decision on how to proceed is expected in the coming weeks as analysis of the problem progresses.

This is exceedingly worrisome. For now the telescope is working (what’s left of it), but as time goes by, more parts will fail, and ultimately we will watch as a productive and spectacular observatory is allowed to fall into disrepair. I understand the safety issues involved in shuttle repair missions for HST, but I wish there were a way to continue the productive life of this great observatory.

Galaxy Gem

Like our Milky Way, galaxy NGC 3949 has a blue disk of young stars peppered with bright pink star-birth regions. In contrast to the blue disk, the bright central bulge is made up of mostly older, redder stars. NGC 3949 lies about 50 million light-years from Earth.

Want to know what we look like from outside the Milky Way Galaxy? Here you go—a privileged view from the Hubble Space Telescope. Of course, this IS a different galaxy, but it’s much like our own: brimming with starbirth regions, shaped into spiral arms and dust lanes that girdle a brilliant core where a black hole lies buried. Gaze at this and think of the millions of stars and planets and maybe even life forms that inhabit this galactic “twin” to our own!