The Hubble Space Telescope has handed a exceptional milestone, because it has now been working for a couple of billion seconds. The telescope was deployed from Space Shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990, and has been in operation for greater than 31 years since then.
“On January 1, 2022, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope formally handed the one-billion second mark,” NASA wrote in a current replace. “Hubble’s first one-billion seconds included 5 astronaut servicing missions to switch and restore elements of the telescope, and greater than 1.5 million scientific observations and counting! We can solely think about what discoveries the following one-billion seconds will carry as new telescopes just like the lately launched James Webb Space Telescope and the longer term Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope construct upon Hubble’s discoveries and work along with Hubble to develop our understanding of the universe.”
The Hubble Space Telescope. NASA
Hubble has had some troubles lately, because it needed to stop science operations twice in 2021 to cope with glitches. The first was a difficulty with its laptop {hardware} which was mounted by switching to backup {hardware} — fortuitously, Hubble carries backups of virtually all its {hardware} so these can be utilized if something goes unsuitable with the first programs. The second situation concerned a synchronization drawback between the science devices and the pc which brought on the telescope to enter protected mode. The Hubble crew was in a position to flip the devices again on one at a time and haven’t seen any related issues since.
Hubble has made important scientific observations over its tenure and continues to provide lovely photographs and essential knowledge. However, it is usually getting older {hardware} and it’ll not final endlessly. The current launch of the James Webb Space Telescope marks the start of a new period, with this observatory appearing because the successor to Hubble. But James Webb operates primarily in the infrared wavelength, not like Hubble which operates primarily in the visible gentle wavelength.
So for now at the least, Hubble will proceed working to gather gorgeous photographs of area for each analysis functions and the pleasure of the general public.
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