Space crash! NASA in big fix over latest Hubble Space Telescope payload computer glitch

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope troubles appear to have worsened after it confirmed the backup payload computer for the telescope also went offline.

In this image shared by NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope is deployed on April 25, 1990 from the space shuttle Discovery.  (NASA/Smithsonian Institution/Lockheed Corporation)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been facing technical issues for the past 2 weeks, with the satellite's main payload computer malfunctioning. Shockingly, this glitch is preventing the space telescope from working. Technicians from National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA have been working at resolving the problems affecting the Hubble Space Telescope, but instead of solutions, they ran into even bigger trouble. – the backup payload computer that is connected to the telescope also stopped functioning.

The development was confirmed by NASA in a statement, in which it explained that the spacecraft has two payload computers – one that was set up with the Hubble Space Telescope and the other installed later in 2009. However, after NASA turned on the backup computer on June 23, for the first time since its installation, the backup computer also began to suffer from the same issues as the main computer.

According to NASA, the good news is that the Hubble Space Telescope itself and the scientific instruments used to collect data about the universe continue to be in “good health” and are currently unaffected by the technical difficulties that are preventing it from operating properly since the computer first stopped working on June 13.

“Additional tests performed on June 23 and 24 included turning on the backup computer for the first time in space. The tests showed that numerous combinations of these hardware pieces from both the primary and backup payload computer all experienced the same error - commands to write into or read from memory were not successful,” NASA said in the statement.

The space agency will continue to work on fixing the Hubble Space Telescope this week, assessing hardware components such as the Science Instrument and Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, or the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF). “If the team determines the CU/SDF or the power regulator is the likely cause, they will recommend switching to the backup CU/SDF module and the backup power regulator,” the space agency explained.

The Hubble Space Telescope has completed 31 years of orbiting the Earth, at a height of 547 kilometres, since it was first launched in 1990. NASA says that it regularly sends back images of space and helping scientists understand the mysteries of space including the accelerating expansion of the universe, how galaxies evolve over time and the study of the atmospheres of various planets outside the solar system.