NASA Hits Snaa in Attempt to Resume Hubble Operations

摘要

NASA's effort to resume full science operations aboard the ailing Hubble Space Telescope hit a snag Oct. 16, and agency officials said it was unlikely they would be able to revive the observatory until late this month. "We think the soonest we would be back to doing full science would be sometime late next week," Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Systems Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said during an Oct. 17 teleconference with reporters. The space telescope slipped back into a protective "safe mode" late Oct. 16 instead of completing a switch to a backup system that engineers hoped would restore Hubble's ability to beam images and data back to Earth, said Susan Hendrix, a NASA spokeswoman at the space telescope's control center at the Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Md.