Bad News about the Hubble

MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-187

NASA TO DISCUSS HUBBLE ANOMALY AND SERVICING MISSION LAUNCH DELAY

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 6 p.m. EDT
today to discuss a significant Hubble Space Telescope anomaly that
occurred this weekend affecting the storage and transmittal of science
data to Earth. Fixing the problem will delay next month's space
shuttle Atlantis' Hubble servicing mission.

The briefing participants are:

- Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington

- John Shannon, Shuttle Program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center
in Houston

- Preston Burch, Hubble manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters in the U.S. should
call 1-800-369-6087 and use the pass code Hubble. International
reporters should call 1-773-756-0843.

As a result of the launch delay, NASA has postponed the planned Oct. 3
Flight Readiness Review and subsequent news conference. The review
will occur at a later date.

The malfunctioning system is Hubble's Control Unit/Science Data
Formatter - Side A. Shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27, the
telescope's spacecraft computer issued commands to safe the payload
computer and science instruments when errors were detected within the
Science Data Formatter. An attempt to reset the formatter and obtain a
dump of the payload computer's memory was unsuccessful.

Additional testing demonstrates Side A no longer supports the
transfer of science data to the ground. A transition to the redundant
Side B should restore full functionality to the science instruments
and operations.

The transition to Side B operations is complex. It requires that five
other modules used in managing data also be switched to their B-side
systems. The B-sides of these modules last were activated during
ground tests in the late 1980's and/or early 1990, prior to launch.

The Hubble operations team has begun work on the Side B transition and
believes it will be ready to reconfigure Hubble later this week. The
transition will happen after the team completes a readiness review.

Hubble could return to science operations in the immediate future if
the reconfiguration is successful. Even so, the agency is
investigating the possibility of flying a back-up replacement system,
which could be installed during the servicing mission.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:
http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

Related images for the briefing will be available at:
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

For more information about the Space Shuttle Program, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

To Join the e-bulletin of the American Astronomical Society's Committee on the Status of Women

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Optically active magnetar -- more news on it.

Thanks Jayanne for posting this wonderful discovery news. Here's more info on it...

http://www.physorg.com/news141483335.html

For the Magnetar lovers.

The press release on

THE HIBERNATING STELLAR MAGNET

is at http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/phot-31-08.html

A pretty amazing silhouette!

Check out this link!

The dust in the outskirts of the foreground galaxy is made visible by being silhouetted  against the large background fellow. Apparently something not very common (but I'd like to see more examples!) Look at those tendrils of dust! 

Richard Feynman's lectures

Here is a wonderful website on the Feynman lectures (videos) and other interesting stuffs. I guess it will be useful to many graduate students (and of course, others too :-) ).

Click here to go the website

This website also features a few good science lectures, nobel prize interviews etc. I hope some of you will find it interesting !

From the AAS STATUS newsletter

3. ASP Resource Guide for Women in Astronomy

From: Hannah Jang-Condell [hannah_at_alum.mit.edu]

http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/womenast_bib.html

Women in Astronomy: An Introductory Resource Guide to Materials in English

by Andrew Fraknoi (Foothill College & Astronomical Society of the Pacific)

"This guide is not meant to be a comprehensive or scholarly

introduction to the complex topic of the role of women in

astronomy, but simply a resource for those educators and students

who wish to explore the challenges and triumphs of women of the

past and present. It's also an opportunity to get to know some of

the key women who have overcome prejudice and exclusion to make

significant contributions to our field. To be included among the

representative women for whom we list individual resources, an

astronomer must have had something non-technical about her life

and work published in a popular-level journal or book. This

explains why so many talented women are not covered; their work is

mainly known through journals that students cannot

read. Suggestions for additional non-technical listings are most

welcome, however."