NASA board to meet Thursday to fix Hubble camera problem

The NASA officials are scheduled to meet on Thursday to decide what to do with the Hubble Space Telescope’s main camera, which has been out of the order for about ten days.

However, the NASA engineers are still trying to determine what caused the Hubble Space Telescope`s Advanced Camera for Surveys to stop working. The space agency announced that Hubble Space Telescope's main camera should be back on line July 3 without any loss of performance.

It can be recalled that the Hubble Space Telescope’s main camera has not been working since Monday, June 19. And engineers last week determined power supply voltages were out of acceptable limits, causing the camera to stop functioning.

Ground controllers received signals on June 19 that voltage readings on the camera's power supply were outside of their acceptable range, causing the camera to go out of order.

The camera was taken off line while the difficulty is being studied, although other instruments on board the orbiting observatory continue to work.

NASA officials have informed that a bad transistor may be the main cause for the voltage problems.

Asserting for the rapid re-functioning of the camera, Ed Ruitberg, associate program manager for Hubble at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement, “We believe we are very close to fully understanding the issue experienced with the camera and we are going to resolve it.”

“However, before we proceed with any actions, we want to have a review board meeting to assess both the trouble-shooting and the proposed solution,” he added.

It is reported that a NASA board will meet on Thursday at the Goddard Space Flight Center to determine how to deal with power problems that have shut down the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

In a statement the space agency said that engineers “anticipate instrument observations will resume no earlier than July 3, with no degradation to performance.”