Gyro sacrifice may extend Hubble's life

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Preliminary results suggest the new, scaled-down operating mode will buy the telescope an extra year of life - possibly until the end of 2008 - without sacrificing too much science... The telescope was originally designed to use three of its six gyroscopes to point and stabilise itself in space. But these devices regularly break down - astronauts have replaced them twice. Now, the 15-year-old observatory has only four working gyroscopes - including one in "standby" mode in case of another failure.Fortunately, engineers at NASA foresaw trouble after the Columbia accident and began work on software that would allow the telescope to run on only two gyros, making the third a further standby. From 20 to 23 February, they conducted the first full-scale test of the new system by using data from only two gyros.