Things appear to be getting worse with each update as NASA tries to bring the Hubble Space Telescope’s payload computer back online.

The computer stopped working on 13th June and there has been a monumental effort to get the computer back up and running. While the computer is faulty, NASA says that Hubble’s scientific instruments and the telescope itself are in a “safe configuration”.

The computer was built in the 1980s and it, as well as its backup is comprised of:

• A Central Processing Module (CPM), which processes the commands that coordinate and control the science instruments
• A Standard Interface (STINT), which bridges communications between the computer’s CPM and other components
• A communications bus, which contains lines that pass signals and data between hardware
• One active memory module, which stores operational commands to the instruments. There are three additional modules which serve as backups.

One of the latest tests included turning the backup computer on for the first time since it was installed in 2009. Unfortunately, things weren’t great.

“The tests showed that numerous combinations of these hardware pieces from both the primary and backup payload computer all experienced the same error – commands to write into or read from memory were not successful,” writes NASA.

“Since it is highly unlikely that all individual hardware elements have a problem, the team is now looking at other hardware as the possible culprit, including the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF). The CU formats and sends commands and data to specific destinations, including the science instruments. The SDF formats the science data from the science instruments for transmission to the ground. The team is also looking at the power regulator to see if possibly the voltages being supplied to hardware are not what they should be. A power regulator ensures a steady constant voltage supply. If the voltage is out of limits, it could cause the problems observed,” added NASA.

Should the CU/SDF or power regulator be the culprit of the issues there are backups onboard Hubble that NASA can switch over to and it will be investigating whether these modules are the cause of the issues over the next week.

If those modules aren’t the culprit, well then we suspect more troubleshooting is on the cards.