NASA to reboot Hubble

Switching it off and on again. Works for most things, right?

NASA is preparing a switchover to a backup computer that could get the Hubble Space Telescope running by Friday.

Boffins at the space agency have been routing around circuitry that failed a little more than two weeks ago.

It is the first time that that NASA has attempted to switch on a back-up computer or done any orbital networking, but the team is confident that the telescope should be beaming snaps back down to Earth by Friday.

Over the past couple of weeks, teams at NASA have been testing a spare data-handling unit and checking diagnostics from the telescope to make sure the plan for the switchover worked. The electronic components being switched on have never been used before during Hubble's 18 years of operation, and the boffins don't know if it is going to work.

To do the switchover, NASA will reboot the telescope in safe mode, issue commands to reroute circuitry through Side B rather than Side A, then start the telescope.

A spokesnaut said the only difference between what its team has been doing and a normal networking job is that on the ground, you tend to power things on and off and reconfigure by pushing buttons and swapping cables. In space you have switches that swap cables, and remotely commanded relays that send a command and power something on or off. Also in Space no one can hear you scream... or bring you donuts.

If the recovery is successful, the first data should be received from one science instrument late Thursday, with full operation restored on Friday.