Young YOU: news of the week
AFTER reports of a computer glitch, scientists and space researchers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) in the US and the European Space Agency scrambled to find out what’s gone wrong with the famous Hubble space telescope.
Nasa has been trying to fix the problem since June, when Hubble stopped collecting data in outer space. They found that the backup computer, which is usually able to help transmit messages back to Earth when the main computer malfunctions (see Word of the Week), has also stopped working.
Nasa engineers are now investigating the power supply of the telescope, to ensure there’s a steady supply to the orbiting research tool.
The fact Hubble, which is one of the largest and most versatile telescopes, has stopped working is serious. Much of what we know about outer space and its galaxies comes from the info gathered by Hubble.
“It’s been operating for over 31 years, and Nasa is hopeful it will last for many more years,” a spokesperson for the space agency said.
HISTORY OF HUBBLE The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit on 24 April 1990. It is named after Edwin P Hubble, an astronomer who made breakthrough discoveries about the universe in the early 1900s.
The aim of sending it into space was for it to gather light from cosmic objects such as stars, comets, asteroids, planets and meteors to help astronomers and other scientists better understand and study the universe.
According to Nasa, Hubble is the length of a large school bus and weighs as much as two adult elephants. It orbits Earth at about 8km a second.
Over the past 31 years, the mega telescope has found new moons around Pluto; captured images including the births and deaths of stars; and helped astronomers track and calculate the age and expansion of the universe and our solar system.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM TELESCOPES ON EARTH? Earth’s atmosphere is made up of a mixture of gases. As the atmosphere and temperatures change, these gases block light from space, preventing it from reaching Earth. The Hubble orbits high above the atmosphere to observe objects in space.
Hubble uses a digital camera that takes pictures in the same way as we would on a cellphone. The orbiting telescope was designed to be extremely steady and accurate to lock onto a target and take highquality pictures of faint, distant phenomena in space.
The telescope then uses special radio waves to send the images to scientists on Earth.