Hubble’s “New” SIC&DH Computer Gets Sick, Locks Up. NASA Successfully Applies Hard Reboot

The Hubble Space Telescope’s new Science Instrument Command and Data Handler (SIC&DH) computer—a decade’s-old spare freshened up, taken into space, and installed by the last Shuttle repair mission—locked up on June 15 thus cutting the flow of commands transmitted from ground control to the Hubble’s scientific instruments and the flow of data from the instruments from the earth. After recognizing that no telemetry was coming from the instruments, ground controllers ordered all instruments into safe mode. The SIC&DH computer ignored NASA’s “request.” Ground control then followed standard engineering procedure and pushed “the big red button,” shutting off the SIC&DH’s power supply. Once power was restored, telemetry data started flowing. NASA did not report this event until June 18 although one of the regular readers of this blog (hubblewife) did report the problem in a comment to a previous Hubble blog post. Since resuscitating the SIC&DH computer system, NASA has brought the Hubble’s new Wide Field Camera 3 out of safe mode and will be bringing the other scientific instruments out of safe mode shortly. Meanwhile, program engineers are trying to figure out what happened to the SIC&DH.