Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope breaks in middle of US government shutdown

Space agency scrambling to fix main camera even as operations have ground to a halt

Thursday 10 January 2019 10:55 GMT

✕

Hubble telescope zooms on galaxy NGC 1052-DF2

The main camera on Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has broken – and the space agency isn't working properly either.

The problems with the famous telescope's instrument come as Nasa is unable to work properly because the US government is still in shutdown as Donald Trump attempts to get money to pay for his border wall.

That means many of the space agency's staff are unable to go into work and that it is having to work through two sets of problems at once.

Nasa said the camera stopped working Tuesday. Hubble's three other science instruments are still working fine, with celestial observations continuing.

This third incarnation of the wide field camera was installed by spacewalking astronauts in 2009. The camera has backup electronics that could be called into action, if necessary, according to Nasa.

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Show all 30

1/30Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Solar Flare

An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking

For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

A Hubble Cosmic Couple

The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant

Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch

The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Earth from the ISS

From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Black Hole Friday

Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead — sharing pictures of black holes

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

NuSTAR

X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Cassiopeia A c

A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Orion Capsule splashes down

The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later — having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965

This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Frosty slopes of Mars

This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Yellowstone from space

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Saturn

This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Worlds Apart

Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Solar Flare

An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy

An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Mars Rover Spirit

Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack

Nasa

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Morning Aurora From the Space Station

Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station

Nasa/Scott Kelly

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984

The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies

Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower

The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower

ESA/Hubble & NASA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Pluto image

Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars

The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way

This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way

NASA & ESA

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

An Astronaut's View from Space

Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Giant Landform on Mars

On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called “draa”

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Expedition 39 Landing

A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan

(NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space

Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness

This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

The camera has captured stunning images of stars, galaxies stretching far back in time and assisted in deep sky surveys. It's also studied objects in our own solar system, discovering some of the tiny moons around Pluto, as well as a 14th moon around Neptune. It takes pictures in both visible and ultraviolet light, as well as near infrared.

Orbiting 350 miles (560 kilometers) above Earth, Hubble was launched in 1990 and visited by space shuttle astronauts, for repairs and upgrades, five times.

Nasa associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said that such problems were to be expected and that they were being looked over by experienced engineers.

"This is when everyone gets a reminder about two crucial aspects of space exploration: 1) complex systems like [the Hubble Space Telescope] only work due to a dedicated team of amazing experts; 2) all space systems have finite life-times and such issues are bound to happen from time to time," he posted.

Last fall, Hubble stopped working altogether for three weeks because of a pointing problem. This is the first time the camera has acted up like this, said Cheryl Gundy, a spokeswoman with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which handle science operations for the telescope.

"NASA is trying to pull together the team to try to diagnose the issue," Gundy said Wednesday.

"We would like to have Hubble back up and working as quickly as possible, and NASA is making that happen," even with the partial government shutdown, she added.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies