Hubble telescope camera is broken and US government shutdown could delay repairs

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00094-0

by Someone • 8 years ago

79 39 8 years ago

“In a nutshell, the government shutdown should not impact our response to the anomaly with WFC3,” she said. “The primary people we need in the Flight and Science Operations will be available to troubleshoot. A tiger team has already been activated.”

Source: https://gizmodo.com/hubble-space-telescope-faces-more-hardwa...

partiallypro• 8 years ago

I was honestly wondering how/why a government shutdown would effect NASA in any broad measure. It doesn't look like, from skimming the article, Nature even interviewed a single person. It's all just conjecture. Sloppy journalism is one of the biggest reasons the press is not trusted more broadly.

vatueil2• 8 years ago

The quote is actually from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which receives funding from NASA but is not directly part of it and therefore is not immediately affected by the shutdown.

However, as the Nature article discusses, parts of NASA that work with Hubble are affected.

The general impact of the shutdown on NASA has been widely reported:

https://amp.space.com/42823-nasa-government-shutdown-plan-20...

Most NASA personnel will be furloughed until such an agreement is reached, agency officials explained recently in a [shutdown FAQ](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/shutdow...). "Most" is something of an understatement, in fact; about 95 percent of NASA employees won't be able to go to work.

golem14• 8 years ago

Just as anecdata, my neighbor, working at NASA (Moffett) seems to be on furlough.

gamblor956• 8 years ago

It seems a bigger problem is sloppy reading, since the article addresses in part how NASA is effected by the shutdown.

SiempreViernes• 8 years ago

Do you have additional commentary about the press now that other posters have provided more context to that quote from a website?

vatueil2• 8 years ago

To provide some missing context bere, the Gizmodo quote is actually in regards to the work of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The Nature article discusses how different groups are affected differently by the shutdown:

Hubble’s mission operations are based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where most employees are on involuntary leave during the shutdown. A few people who operate spacecraft that are actively flying, including Hubble, have been allowed to keep working.
But fixing the telescope, which is almost 30 years old, will almost certainly require additional government employees who are forbidden to work during the shutdown. NASA has formed an investigative team, composed primarily of contractors and experts from its industry partners, to examine the technical troubles.
...
The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which runs Hubble’s science operations, remains open for now, using money it received from NASA before the shutdown started. But many of Hubble’s technical experts are based at Goddard, which is closed.

liuliu• 8 years ago

As a by-side casual observer, if the military continue to get funded while civilian departments continue furlough for months if not years, would that creates some weird social dynamics?

gizmo385• 8 years ago

If this were to continue for several months, I would assume that most of the employees would quit those departments, which would probably be catastrophic, both socially and economically.

adventured• 8 years ago

It's not going to continue past the end of January under any scenario.

Trump will go with a national emergency declaration (we've had 58 of those declared just since 1979) in an attempt to fund and build the wall the military route. That will be halted due to an injunction. Then it'll end up at the Supreme Court. Assuming the Democrats don't offer a compromise to Trump that is.

fzeroracer3• 8 years ago

It would be incredibly catastrophic, considering the FDA has stopped domestic food inspections among other things.

pastor_elm2• 8 years ago

All these workers (except potentially contractors) get backpay. Yeah, it sucks if they have no savings, but people I know in the fed are treating it like a vacation.

toufiqbarhamov3• 8 years ago

I’m pretty sure the ones forced to work without pay don’t feel like it’s a vacation. No way are air traffic controllers feeling the “beach vibe” and considering that about a third of TSA workers are calling in sick they seem to agree. It’s also pretty hard to have savings when your pay is shit, and hard to plan for insane political whims with indefinite expiration dates.

ajross2• 8 years ago

All these workers (except potentially contractors) get backpay

Not automatically. Everyone just assumes that whatever funding bill eventually passes will include a backpay provision.

But in a legal sense, these jobs simply don't exist any more. No plan exists in law to pay these employees ever again.

baxtr• 8 years ago

Aliens have been waiting for this chance since years

Varcht• 8 years ago

I knew the aliens were colluding with Trump!

kakarot• 8 years ago

All of this distraction with building a wall, when we should have been building a roof.

Magical• 8 years ago

These shouldn't really be connected in a perfect society.

kempbellt• 8 years ago

Think of the children! I know thousands of people our out of work or working un-paid, but this is horrendous. Getting the government back online to prioritize Hubble repairs should be #1 priority!

willart4food• 8 years ago

Did they buy Device Protection via Square Trade?

sublupo• 8 years ago

So what's the problem with that? it's not like by delaying the repairs a few months that something worse will happen. Eventually when the government resumes, the telescope will be repaired. The only issue is that we may miss a few months of pictures (not saying that the Hubble is useless, just that by not working for a few months, nothing bad will happen)

masonic• 8 years ago

What "repair" option is there with STS gone?

Hubble telescope camera is broken and US government shutdown could delay repairs

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