Every spacecraft malfunctions once in a while, and even the most powerful space telescope ever launched isn’t immune.
the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) launched in December 2021 and has been conducting scientific observations since July 2022, astounding the world with its remarkable images and revolutionary data. But on Jan. 15, JWST’s Near Infrared Imaging and Slotted Spectroscopy (NIRISS) instrument “experienced a communications delay within the instrument, causing its flight program to time out,” the Jan. 24 report said. statment (Opens in a new tab) from NASA. The statement noted that NIRISS cannot currently be used for science.
“There is no indication of any hazard to the instruments, and the observatory and other instruments are all in good health,” NASA officials wrote. “The affected scientific observations will be rescheduled.”
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The release notes that NIRISS is a contribution from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), so NASA and CSA personnel are collaborating to troubleshoot the problem.
Under normal circumstances, NIRISS can work in Four different modes (Opens in a new tab)According to NASA. It can act as a camera when other JWST instruments are busy, and it can analyze light signatures to study microskys outer planetsit can perform high-contrast imaging, and it has a mode designed for remote searching galaxies.
NIRISS is not the first machine on JWST to encounter a problem. In August, A.J A grating wheel inside the observatory’s medium infrared instrument Mary started to show signs of friction. The wheel is used in only one of the instrument’s four observation modes, so individuals pause these observations while MIRI continues its work in its other three modes.
By November, engineers had tracked down the cause of the problem and began developing guidelines for safely using the affected mode, called a medium resolution spectrometer.
In addition, in December, the observatory spent two weeks malfunction That repeatedly sent the telescope into safe mode, interrupting scientific observations. Engineers traced the problem to a software glitch in the observatory’s attitude control system, which controls the orientation of the spacecraft’s points.
The observatory returned to normal operations from that issue on December 20, according to a NASA statement at the time.
The NIRISS announcement came exactly a year later JWST has reached its outpostEarth’s sun Lagrangian point 2, which is located about a million miles (1.5 million km) from a land on the opposite side the sun.
Email Megan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @mbartelsMegan Bartell. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.