HST in Trouble

Bad news from the HST this morning.
Advanced Camera for Surveys has packed in.
See
breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=208747256&p=zx874796z

John Dobson said that real Astromomers look at the sky.
Pretend Astronomers look at computer screens.
Hear Hear John Dobson.

Bad news for HST, good news for pmgisme presumably...

Bring back Stonehenge I say.
All them-thar gizmos cant be good for us.
Peter.

Lets hope the rest of the instumentation holds up until the service visit. Power Supply Units seem to be causing a lot of hassle. The ACS though has been one of the mainstay instruments, it'll be sorely missed until they can replace the PSUs. It'd be nice if this failure prompted an earlier than scheduled service visit, though I won't be holding my breath.

I don't think even Peter or the venerable John Dobson will be happy about the current state of HST. There are things that can be done with a long exposure camera that the eye could never hope to see (Hubble Deep Field for example) or even imagine was there.

Bring back Stonehenge I say.
All them-thar gizmos cant be good for us.
Peter.

:lol: a great response.

Certainly a blow for the HST, how long is it until the next mission to it ??

I think the service mission is planned for May 2008 or something like that.