I noticed the Space Shuttle upgraded the entire computer system on the Hubble telescope because it was "obselete".

Anyone know if it was Y2K related?

Shuggy.

-- Shuggy (shimei123@yahoo.co.uk), December 24, 1999

Answers

Its 386 CPU was replaced with a 486, you tell me.

-- Dan G (thepcguru@hotmail.com), December 24, 1999.

The timing of the repairs WAS interesting.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 24, 1999.

good thing that third launch date worked out, too.

-- rw (ridleywalker@aol.com), December 24, 1999.

I heard part of a blurb on CNN that indeed the computer/chip/upgrade was a part of making the Hubble y2k compliant. Yes, they actually said that. I was most surprised. However, it was quick, and the next time around, it wasn't mentioned. The y2k part was edited out.

-- Richard (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), December 24, 1999.

They knew the Hubble was not compliant, so they wanted to fix it. They don't trust their own work on the shuttle, so they wanted to do the flight before the end of the year, and sure as heck didn't want the bird in the air during rollover.

No big deal, fix a low-orbit satellite, we're happy. Now, for your next problem, figure out what's gonna happen with all the high-orbit (geostationary, etc) satellites that have 386's. (This is a pass/fail quiz.)

-- bw (home@puget.sound), December 24, 1999.

Was that a 386 in Hubble? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it was a Z80!

In any case, the 386 processor has nothing to do with dates. Invalid date processing is purely a software problem, whether or not that software is burned into silicon, which means a ROM of some flavor, NOT a processor. This also means that changing only the CPU will neither cause nor cure any date bug.

However, in the vernacular, when someone says they're changing out the processor, they often are referring to the entire board that contains the processor, the RTC, the ROM, and all support chips. They black-box the whole schmeer. And the ROMs on Hubble may well have had date bugs.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 24, 1999.

I think they are converting the Hubble into a huge 10 foot wide laser beam. If anyone is hoarding food and they will not turn it over, they will vaporize your house with the press of a button. :-)

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), December 24, 1999.

If the Hubble CPU was as good as a 386 I'd be amazed. I worked on Chandra (next in the "Great Observatories" series after Hubble) but don't know anything about it's CPU. There's an excellent book named "Hubble Wars" that explains the technology and problems in the Hubble program. A lot of the stuff on Hubble was old and used before it was installed including gyros which had been used for life cycle tests for cryin out loud. Then it was stored (at Aerojet) for quite a while after Shuttle Challenger blew up. Hubble was also an old spacecraft design which may have some bearing on CPU choice; all the gov "Keyhole" series survielance sats are cousins to Hubble.

-- Don Kulha (dkulha@vom.com), December 24, 1999.

But the Keyholes don't have manned spacecraft flying service crews up to repair and upgrade them, do they? ;)

-- Heardthings (goBaBoom@nightinNevada.mil), December 24, 1999.

First NASA also planed to replace one failed gyroscope, but by the time they got up there 4 gyroscopes had to be replaced. I think it is clear that NASA's Hubbell gyroscope failed, possibly due to embeddeds, and so I expect a significant number of our satellites to be toast.

-- Hokie (nn@va.com), December 24, 1999.

Flint: I don't recall anything about the Hubble being Z80 based, but I can certainly remember tapping away on my old TRS-80 while the first Shuttle was being launched and thinking "I have as much computing power on my desk as those astronauts taking off in the shuttle".

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), December 24, 1999.

Malcolm:

I can't remember where I read that Hubble was based on a Z80, but it couldn't have been more than that, given the date when the software and CPU were frozen, which was long before Hubble's eventual launch. And I believe the first shuttles were mostly using 8008 and other 4- bit processors, but a LOT of them.

I wonder what they put in there now?

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 24, 1999.