…for those who haven’t heard, Hubble today lost the use of one of its most important instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys. There seems to be little hope of more than minimal repair, and at present there is no plan to extend what is already an extremely complicated shuttle repair mission to fix ACS.
On a more prosaic note, there must be a lot of frustrated astronomers around the world. The deadline for proposals for the next round of HST observations – a deadline which causes stress and huge amounts of work in equal measure – was last Friday.
Mark Garth on January 30, 2007
I’ve just re-watched the January edition of ‘The Sky at Night’ which featured the Hubble and talked about the forthcoming mission to add new and repair some of the existing equipment. Sadly until sometime in 08, it seems that the ACS will be down to 1/3 functionality. Given the spectacular pictures it has sent back, this indeed is a shame.