News Astronomy

One of Hubble’s Tools Fails: Observatory loses a sharp ultraviolet eye

By Ron Cowen

- More than 2 years ago

Last week, an instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope stopped working, shutting astronomers’ only sharp ultraviolet eye on the universe.

HUBBLE TROUBLE. One of the four scientific instruments aboard Hubble stopped working last week. The craft is pictured here docked with the space shuttle. NASA

On Aug. 3, a malfunction—possibly a short circuit—developed in a 5-volt power supply that drives moving parts in the observatory’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS).