The elderly Hubble Space Telescope is doing it again | science and planet

Hubble arrived at the end of October Dealing with malfunction. All tools were placed in the so-called Safe Mode Scientific research has stopped. In June, the space telescope also had problems with its power supply. It took a month to fix it.

Hubble was launched in April 1990, and has been in orbit for more than 31 years at an altitude of more than 500 km. He studied distant galaxies, among other things, which gave scientists a better picture of the origin of the universe. He also captured remarkable and well-known photographs of distant nebulae.

Hubble received its last service in 2009. It is not known how long the instruments will last. If NASA abandons the space telescope, it could slowly fall out of orbit and eventually burn up in the atmosphere sometime within the next decade.

later this month Hubble’s successor should go to space. This is the James Webb Space Telescope. Built together by the United States, Europe, and Canada, it is set to become the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built. James Webb can see farther and sharper than Hubble.

Watch also: Why did the European Space Agency build the largest space telescope ever with James Webb? Science journalist Martin Peters explains it