It’s been a bad month for Hubble, the primary visible light space telescope in operation today. In operation since the 1990’s, the telescope has relied on occasional visits by astronauts to fix broken components. In 2009, the last visitation occurred, where astronauts fixed all six gyroscopes necessary to point the telescope into the night sky. The telescope only needs three to operate at full capacity, but gyroscopes are a major point of failure, so some are kept as extra capacity. In the recent years, three of the six have broken, leaving the telescope with just the right amount to maintain full control. However, one more failed in the first week of October. NASA’s telescope can operate at a highly reduced capacity on just one, so the plan was to switch to one and preserve the other to extend the operational life as long as possible.

In a surprise turn of events, NASA was able to restore one of the gyroscopes that had previously been “dead” through a complicated series of events that involved rotating the telescope and switching the gyroscopes off and on again to clear any blockage. This may not work for long, however, as the gyroscopes are liable to failure. In the end, Hubble will fail, and have to be shut down permanently. In the meantime, however, we can revel in a return to full science operations soon.

Sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/24/no-nasa-didnt-fix-hubble-telescope-by-just-turning-it-off-again/?utm_term=.2d904c0a06fc

The world of aerospace had a bit of a shock yesterday at the failure of the Soyuz launch vehicle during the ascent to orbit. Very little is currently known about the failure. What we do know is that two astronauts, Nick Hague from NASA and Aleksey Ovchinin, were riding aboard the Soyuz FG launch vehicle during liftoff when the booster began to fall apart beneath them. During the separation of the four side-mounted rocket boosters, the rocket began to break up and the abort system was activated. This fired small rockets mounted to the top of the booster, quickly carrying away the astronauts from the doomed rocket, all while putting them through intensive forces. The capsule then began to fall towards the ground on ballistic trajectory, a type of emergency atmospheric entry trajectory designed to bleed off speed as fast as possible without killing them, once again putting them through intense force. The capsule made a successful emergency landing under three parachutes, and the astronauts were recovered by search and rescue forces. Shown here is a picture of the rocket breaking apart during the staging event. 

The implications could be quite serious for the future of manned spaceflight. The three astronauts on board the space station currently do have to come down at some point, but the vehicle to put more astronauts aboard is now grounded until the problem is found. There is a distinct possibility that the space station could sit empty for a while, a frightening thing to happen for one of the most expensive space projects in all history. Information will come out slowly, and more posts will be made with updates.

Sources:

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/10/soyuz-rocket-failure

https://www.space.com/42110-soyuz-rocket-launch-failure-seen-from-space.html