Switched-on crews fix Hubble

It hasn’t been the best month for the Hubble Space Telescope.

The first week of October, one of the spacecraft’s three gyroscopes failed. The giant telescope needs the devices to measure turning speeds and to zero in on the things in space it observes and photographs. In a statement, NASA reassured the public that the breakdown was expected.

On Oct. 16, the Hubble team attempted a “running restart,” turning the problematic gyroscope off for one second, then back on again. Unfortunately, the “have you tried powering it off and on?” approach didn’t work in space. Instead, what appeared to work was repeatedly turning the entire spacecraft to see if it would “dislodge” the problem.

The repeated manoeuvres seemed to work, Hubble Operations Project Manager Patrick Crouse said. “We believed all along ... that the gyro appeared to be useful and just had to make sure to get it back to a useful state.”

Still, that didn’t stop a variety of misleading headlines.

“NASA fixes Hubble gyroscope by turning it off and on again,” Engadget stated.

“What fixed NASA’S Hubble space telescope? Someone flipped a switch on and off,” USA Today followed.

Crouse said the “oversimplification” was understandable given the confusion over extremely technical matters.