- Monday, 9 November 2009
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The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected - Swedish proverb
IT crowd fixes Hubble space telescope
NASA BOFFINS seem to have rung up the IT Crowd when it came to advice for fixing the computer on the Hubble Space Telescope.
The computer, which was recently installed, was a refurbished PC which was built as a back-up before Hubble was launched.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the computer started playing up seriously and sending silly signals to the observatory's main computer. It then tried to stick all the science instruments in safe mode, but the instruments did not respond.
Boffins worked out that the computer was neither receiving nor forwarding commands. So they tried turning it off and turning on again. Any IT Hell Desk droid could have read that from a script, of course.
Magically that worked, and the operators on the ground were able to order the science instruments into safe mode.
It turned out that the computer was okay after all and was just packing a sad.
Computer boffins are still trying to understand the malfunction, but they seem to have forgotten that computers in the 1990s didn't have to have any explanations for playing up with such antics. µ
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without a reboot finger is just a mad decision.
nah... ithink that just too much radiation, hubble is in space...
glitch or something lile that is common despite that's old computer after all
they were that lazy, of corse they wouldn't bother upgrading the peace of garbage or a mod here and there, befor spending a fortune to send the outdated part up there.all that math and learnin' aint' don nothin' for thum'!
"but they seem to have forgotten that computers in the 1990s didn't have to have any explanations for playing up with such antics." Um, yes they did, I was working on computers then, the usual error messages went something similar to this "error, missing keyboard, press F1 to continue."
Why are they bothering wasting man hours trying to figure out what went wrong? Surely everyone expects that it might have been ET "borrowing" the computer for a short period to work out some intergalactic travel coordinate, or maybe to get some free airtime for ET to phone home?
old computers = reliable and robust. simplicity is one of the most cherished virtue in engineering. nasa don't launch '"peace" of garbage' on earth orbit. if ten year old cpu can do the job, use it! hubble telescope ain't running 3d games up there.
"mod here and there"? you make a fool out of yourself boy! so if this project was up to a clueless fanboy geek like you, you'd launch hubble with i7 cpu huh? one hardware error/bug, millions of dollars worth of taxpayer money lost in space.
"Turning it off and turning it on again works"
So - just like Windows, then?