Hubble telescope to get a remote fix

The science data formatter, which gathers information from the various instruments aboard the space telescope and packages it for delivery, broke down late last month.

The failure forced the postponement of a repair mission to the 18-year-old space telescope, which was already suffering from a variety of technical problems that limited its ability to gather new data.

After studying the latest problem for two weeks, engineers announced at a press conference today at NASA headquarters in Washington that they will go ahead with the switch to an identical backup system.

Engineers are uncertain whether the backup formatter, which has sat dormant in space for almost two decades, will work. If it doesn't, the telescope will be out of commission at least until the rescheduled repair mission launches, which could be as soon as February 2009.

Hubble has taken some of the most striking pictures of the heavens in history. But as of this moment, the only science it can do is astrometry, which relies on Hubble's fine guidance sensors to measure distances to stars.

"It is obviously a possibility" that the instruments will not come up, said Art Whipple, Hubble Space Telescope program manager at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "But we have very good confidence that this will work."

One thing in their favor, Whipple said, is that space is "a very benign storage environment." The aging of electronics on Earth by corrosion and contamination by dust does not occur in space.

Things do break, however, as evidenced by the crippling problems the telescope has suffered since the last repair mission in 2002.

Before the current problems, astronauts aboard the space shuttle were scheduled to install an ultraviolet spectrograph and wide-field camera, as well as repair failed electronics on the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Hubble also needs a new set of gyroscopes.

"Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever," Whipple said.

Whipple said engineers at Goddard would begin sending computer commands to reconfigure the data formatter Wednesday morning.

If all goes as expected, data should begin flowing again as early as Thursday night.

john.johnson@latimes.com