CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Another NASA space telescope has shut down and halted science observations.
Less than a week after the Hubble Space Telescope went offline, the Chandra X-ray Observatory did the same thing. NASA said Friday that Chandra’s automatically went into so-called safe mode Wednesday, possibly because of a gyroscope problem.
Hubble went into hibernation last Friday due to a gyroscope failure.
Both orbiting observatories are old: Hubble is 28, while Chandra is 19. Flight controllers are working to resume operations with both.
NASA says it’s coincidental both went “asleep” within a week of one another. An astronomer who works on Chandra, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted Friday that “Chandra decided that if Hubble could have a little vacation, it wanted one, too.”
On Wednesday, the @ChandraXRay Observatory entered into safe mode. The scientific instruments are safe & there is an investigation underway looking at the cause of the safe mode transition. Designed for a 5-year mission, Chandra is now 19 years old. Info: https://t.co/AShwpDI03w pic.twitter.com/6FpX5xyk31
— NASA (@NASA) October 12, 2018
(Copyright (c) 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)