Author: Loren Grush
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, famous for its brilliant pictures of the cosmos, is having some trouble in orbit around Earth. On Friday, an important mechanism on the spacecraft failed — one that is needed to re-orient the observatory in space and keep it pointed at parts of the sky for long periods of time. Now, Hubble is in a safe mode while engineers try to address the problem.
The broken mechanism on Hubble is a gyroscope, or a gyro. It’s a device the many spacecraft use to change their orientation in space. Gyros are essentially wheels inside the vehicle that spin, shifting the position of the spacecraft. It’s a key tool that Hubble uses to change its direction and look at different spots of the Universe, in order to observe...
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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, famous for its brilliant pictures of the cosmos, is having some trouble in orbit around Earth. On Friday, an important mechanism on the spacecraft failed — one that is needed to re-orient the observatory in space and keep it pointed at parts of the sky for long periods of time. Now, Hubble is in a safe mode while engineers try to address the problem.
The broken mechanism on Hubble is a gyroscope, or a gyro. It’s a device the many spacecraft use to change their orientation in space. Gyros are essentially wheels inside the vehicle that spin, shifting the position of the spacecraft. It’s a key tool that Hubble uses to change its direction and look at different spots of the Universe, in order to observe...
Continue reading…
Continue reading...