Science

NASA said Monday that it is delaying its mission to the Hubble Space Telescope until next year because of a serious breakdown of the observatory in orbit.

Space shuttle Atlantis had been scheduled to blast off in just two weeks, but an unexpected problem with the Hubble appeared Saturday night, when the telescope stopped sending science data.

That potentially means a new repair issue for the astronauts to confront, one they haven’t trained for and never anticipated.

The failure of the command and data-handling system for Hubble’s science instruments means the telescope is unable to capture and beam down the data needed to produce its stunning deep space images.

Early Monday afternoon, NASA announced that the October 14 launch had been postponed until at least early next year, possibly February.

When Atlantis does fly, NASA may send up a replacement part for the failed component.

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The idea may scare some, but Intel predicts that by 2050 machines could surpass the peak of human intelligence.

So predicted Justin Rattner, chief technology officer at the chip maker, in a presentation at the Intel Developer Forum which examined how technology is expected to bridge the gap between man and machine.

The vision included sensitive robots and shape-shifting materials.

“There is no question that one of the most likely things that will happen in the next 40 years is that machine and human intelligence will come much closer together,” Mr Rattner told the BBC.

“The ability of humans to communicate with machines and for machines to communicate with humans will get so much better.”
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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) NASA couldn’t send commands to the Phoenix Mars lander for most of Tuesday because of a radio glitch, delaying a second day of activities, officials said.

The minor problem was fixed later in the day and the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter resumed relaying the lander’s images of the Martian landscape back to Earth, said NASA officials.

Phoenix, the latest spacecraft on Mars, communicates with scientists through two NASA orbiters circling the planet.

The Reconnaissance orbiter earlier had turned its radio off, possibly because of a cosmic ray, said Fuk Li, manager of the Mars exploration program for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

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