Hubble trouble: Nasa space telescope’s 1980s-era payload computer offline | South China Morning Post

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Nasa has spent more than a week trying to fix the Hubble Telescope’s computer hardware issues. The problem: a 1980s-era payload computer, which is supposed to control and coordinate scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft and monitor them for health and safety purposes, stopped working June 13, according to a Nasa statement. “After the halt occurred … the main computer stopped receiving a ‘keep-alive’ signal, which is a standard handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is well,” Nasa said in the statement. The payload computer is part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling module,...