At the end of November, NASA announced that because the control team found a problem with the Hubble Space Telescope's gyroscope, it decided to suspend the scientific research mission until the problem was solved. The initial gyroscope problem was discovered in late November. By November 23, the Hubble Space Telescope automatically entered safe mode and alerted the control team for debugging and recovery.
According to the instructions, one of the three gyroscopes equipped with the Hubble Space Telescope gave an incorrect reading. According to the design, when this happens, the Hubble Space Telescope will automatically stop working and enter a safe mode.
The gyroscope is mainly used to measure the rotation rate of the Hubble Space Telescope and to determine where the telescope is pointing. Without the data provided by the gyroscope, the Hubble Telescope would lose its sense of direction in space.
During this period, the control team also tried to repair it, but after the repair, the gyroscope still gave incorrect data, so it entered safe mode several times. Now NASA has decided to resume the scientific operation of the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA analyzed the operating data and determined the problem with the gyroscope and conducted a test. Good performance was observed during the test. For this reason, the control team decided to operate the gyroscope in a higher-precision mode in the future. Other system components of the Hubble Space Telescope are currently operating well.
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and was named after the great astronomer and father of galaxy astronomy Edwin Hubble. It has been operating in space for 33 years.
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