There seem to be some serious issues with the 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope. One of its instruments used for storing and sending data back to headquarters recently broke down, leading to NASA’s decision to postpone its repair mission scheduled for the telescope.

The malfunctioning piece, a control unit and science data formatter, is used for separating the data from the five major science instruments found on the telescope, which is then sent to the scientists on Earth. The device broke down Saturday night and all the efforts made so far for resetting it failed.

"All of our efforts . . . totally failed," Preston Burch, manager of the Hubble program at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., explained yesterday evening during a press conference. At this point, the nature and the exact location of the problem have not yet been identified, but there are several possible scenarios and once the investigations will proceed, the situation should get a lot clearer.

Considering the fact that the instrument is exposed to extremely high temperatures, this could be the explanation. Also, the constant long-term exposure to radiation could have triggered the malfunction.

NASA had scheduled the telescope’s fourth repair mission for October 14 and was forced to postpone it in order to properly assess the damage and come up with a good solution. Unfortunately, the work and preparations for such a complex process demand a lot of time and the repair mission will be delayed at least until February 2009. These five months will be used for the crew’s instruction on how to install a backup formatter.

The October mission involved a crew of seven astronauts that were supposed to conduct five spacewalks in order to add two new instruments on the telescope and also repair the electrical failures on its best camera and on a spectrograph. The new instruments are designed to help scientists in their quest of finding the earliest star system and also attempt to determine which planets present the needed environmental components to sustain life.

Even though it surely is a frustrating issue, NASA’s scientists agree on the fact that it is much better that the problem occurred now and not after the repair mission, as it would have caused a lot more wasted time and money on preparing a second repair session. The current situation is already draining the agency’s funds with about $10 million for each month that the mission is delayed. Even so, the scientists keep their heads up as such problems are bound to happen in this domain. "This is one of those things that goes with spaceflight," said NASA's John Shannon, the shuttle program manager. "The (astronauts) are very stoic. They will be ready when the hardware is ready."

The malfunction is considered a challenge that will demand a lot of preparations and consistent team-work. Once the repair process will be completed, the telescope will carry on with its scheduled assignments over a period of five years, when its retirement is planned.