Hubble on the Bubble: Can NASA fix the world’s most famous telescope?

On June 13, 2021, Hubble Space Telescope detected a problem in one of its computers, and went into “safe mode.” It shut down all non-essential operations, closed its hatch, and awaited engineers back on Earth to figure out how to fix it.

But that’s turning out to be harder than expected.

The initial problem seemed to be in a memory module in its payload computer, which organizes and controls the science instruments onboard the observatory: its cameras, if you will. There are five scientific de...