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Hubble Space Telescope shutdown due to computer error
Back when I was in the tenth grade, the Space Shuttle Discovery carried one of the first Great Observatories into orbit: The Hubble Space Telescope. And…. we very quickly learned that the telescope had issues. Built in the 80s, and delayed by the Challenger accident in 1986, this telescope was already carrying an old computer when it launched. It was also carrying a flawed mirror… but we figured out how to fix that with corrective lenses, so no big deal. The scope entered its prime my second year of university, after the first servicing mission gave Hubble its amazing vision. For my entire professional life, I’ve benefited from the data this spectacular piece of engineering has been able to send back to Earth.
And we’ve gotten to benefit from this telescope far longer than anyone ever expected.
Hubble was designed to fit into the Space Shuttles cargo bay and to be flown back and forth from space for regular serving. After the Challenger accident, that was deemed unsafe, and after Colombia was lost at the beginning of this century, NASA didn’t really want to even send a space shuttle up as high as Hubble’s Orbit. The plan was, as soon as JWST was up and operating, HST would retire, knowing its legacy of science had safely passed to a new set of mirrors.
