Chandra Follows Hubble into Safe Mode Due to Glitch in Gyroscope!
By Lorah Utter
October 15, 2018
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, one of NASA’s Great Observatories, put itself into safe mode on October 10 due to a glitch in one of its gyroscopes. The gyros are needed to help Chandra turn and point to new targets as well as to steady the telescope.
NASA said Chandra’s safe mode is a protective mode in which “critical hardware is swapped to back-up units, the spacecraft points so that the solar panels get maximum sunlight, and the mirrors point away from the Sun.
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NASA said in a statement on October 15 that the ground control team has completed plans to switch the gyro that caused the problem
Image of Chandra X-ray Telescope. Credit: NASA
with a gyro being held in reserve on the telescope. NASA also said the team expects to return Chandra to science operations by the end of this week.
Chandra has two sets of two gyros, for a total of four gyros. It can conduct normal mission operations with any two of the four, but cross-strapping them would generate more heat in the spacecraft.
The Hubble Space Telescope, another of NASA’s Great Observatories, is also in safe mode right now due to gyroscope problems. For more on that see Hubble Telescope in Safe Mode!
Since Chandra was launched in 1999, it has detected X-ray emissions from very hot regions of the Universe such as exploded stars, clusters of galaxies, and matter around black holes. The image below of galaxy AM6044-741, which is 300 million light years away, is a great example of what Chandra can accomplish, especially in partnership with other great telescopes.
NASA released this image on September 6, 2018, and said the Chandra data reveal the presence of very bright X-ray sources, most likely binary systems powered by either a stellar-mass black hole or neutron star in a beautiful ring.
The composite image of the galaxy shows X-rays from Chandra (purple) combined with optical data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, and blue). Nasa said “this ring, while not wielding power over
Galaxy AM 0644-741. Image credit: -ray: NASA/CXC/INAF/A. Wolter et al Optical: NASA/STScI
Middle Earth, may help scientists better understand what happens when galaxies smash into one another in catastrophic impacts.”
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