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Greetings Colleagues,

As you may know one of the 'consumables' on Hubble are gyroscopes that the
satellite uses for orienting itself. Traditionally three are needed. Hubble
has a total of six, but two of those are dead, so we currently have three
with one spare. Prior to the cancellation of Servicing Mission 4 the plan
was to restore the satellite to a full complement of gyros.

Our engineering teams have been working to find a way to conduct science
observations with just two working gyros, using other means to derive the
third positional axis. Last week an extensive test was conducted onboard
Hubble and the results were very good. You can read about it here:

http://www.stsci.edu/hst/localNews?display_type=all#HeadlineNews

Note that "PSF" stands for Point Spread Function, a measurement of how the
light from a point source 'spreads out' on the detectors.

Sincerely,

John

John M. Stoke
Manager, Informal Science Education
Office of Public Outreach
Space Telescope Science Institute
3700 San Martin Drive
Baltimore MD 21228 USA
T +1 410 338 4394
F +1 410 338 4579
[log in to unmask]
http://hubblesource.stsci.edu

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