2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
The Chandra X-ray Space Observatory has left safe mode and will resume its scientific program at the end of the week. The cause of the failure was the breakdown of one of the gyroscopes, according to a press release on the observatory's website.
The telescope went into safe mode on October 10. In this mode, scientific instruments are turned off, backup units of critical systems are launched, and solar panels are deployed towards the Sun so as to collect the maximum amount of light. Subsequent analysis of the data showed that there was a malfunction in the operation of one of the gyroscopes in the telescope orientation system, which led to the fact that the on-board computer, based on inaccurate data, incorrectly calculated the angular momentum of the apparatus, after which a transition to a safe mode was initiated.
The mission team switched the telescope to use another, working gyroscope, and turned off the "guilty" and placed it in reserve. After completing the work on adjusting the software and checking the operation of the orientation system, the telescope will return to observations, it is assumed that this will happen at the end of this week. This is not the first incident with orbiting observatories over the past month - earlier the Hubble Space Telescope went into safe mode due to a similar malfunction and is still in it.
The Chandra was launched into space in 1999 and has served a total of 19 years in orbit, although the observatory's original service life was estimated at five years. The telescope is capable of registering X-ray quanta with energies from 0.1 to 10 keV. The need to work outside the atmosphere is due to the fact that X-rays are strongly scattered by molecules of atmospheric gases and it is impossible to obtain highly detailed images of deep space objects in this wavelength range using ground-based observatories. X-ray sources are pulsars, active galactic nuclei, black holes and clouds of rarefied intergalactic hot gas in clusters and supernova remnants.
Earlier it was reported that in March 2019, the Russian space X-ray and gamma observatory Spektr-RG, which has already successfully passed comprehensive electrical tests, may go into space. And in 2028, the launch of a new space x-ray telescope ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics) is planned, which will be many times more sensitive than Chandra and XMM-Newton. The telescope is being created by the European Space Agency.
