Mission Operations

Behind Hubble’s captivating images and groundbreaking science is a team of people who control the telescope, ensure its health and safety, and innovate ways to keep it at top performance more than three decades after its launch. This group of engineers, scientists, and operators at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center work together to monitor Hubble as it travels around Earth, point the telescope at cosmic targets, and solve any problems that arise. They perform their work in specialized facilities that provide the tools and equipment needed to operate this great observatory and continue its legacy of success.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the Hubble Space Telescope Operations Project, the agency’s team of managers, engineers, and scientists who oversee all aspects of the Hubble mission. The mission operations team is an integrated group of civil servants and contractors who are responsible for Hubble’s day-to-day activities – those functions of the mission that assure the health, safety, and performance of the spacecraft. Examples of the work performed by the operations team include commanding the spacecraft, monitoring and adjusting the spacecraft’s systems (power, thermal, data management, pointing control, etc.), developing flight software, upgrading the control center’s hardware and software, and maintaining the network and ground systems. Many of these activities are performed in the Space Telescope Operations Control Center (STOCC), the nerve center for Hubble’s mission operations.

The STOCC consists of a Mission Operations Room (MOR) and an Operations Support Room (OSR). The MOR is Hubble’s primary command and control room; both manual and automated operations are performed from this location.

Prior to the implementation of automated operations in May 2011, a team of console operators staffed the MOR around the clock. They executed the required procedures to acquire communications with the telescope, managed Hubble’s science and engineering data recorders, and loaded Hubble’s computers with command sequences. They also monitored telemetry from the spacecraft and reported any problems or concerns to the appropriate subsystem engineers.

These functions, which form Hubble’s daily routine, are now performed autonomously, enabling STOCC personnel to focus on special operations and various tests. Since the advent of automated operations, the STOCC is staffed only eight hours a day, five days a week. If an anomaly occurs on the spacecraft or within the ground system when the facility is unoccupied, a high-reliability text messaging system immediately alerts the appropriate members of the operations team.

In the Operations Support Room (OSR), STOCC personnel work with a high-fidelity spacecraft simulator, or directly with the spacecraft, to conduct a variety of tasks. These include testing any configuration changes planned for Hubble, analyzing engineering telemetry, testing flight or ground software updates, and monitoring any contingency procedures or other special commanding in response to an observatory anomaly. The operations team continuously examines spacecraft subsystem performance, looking for trends that could signal component degradation and identifying ways to improve system performance and extend the mission’s lifetime.

Communications with Hubble are accomplished via a network interface from the STOCC to NASA’s White Sands Test Facility complex located in White Sands, New Mexico, near Las Cruces. The large antennas there transmit radio waves to NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS), which forwards them to Hubble. Science observations and engineering data that the telescope stores on solid-state recorders are returned to Goddard using the reverse path. Once received and quality checked, the science data is forwarded to the Space Telescope Science Institute via dedicated high-speed network links where it is processed, archived, and distributed.

The Hubble mission and science operations teams strive to set the standard for NASA’s great observatories by continuously improving the telescope’s science productivity. The optical quality of the telescope, the excellent pointing performance of the spacecraft, the diverse capabilities of its instruments, and the skillful dedication of the mission’s staff keep Hubble at the forefront of observational astrophysics. The observatory is operating at peak performance thanks to the astronauts who successfully completed Servicing Mission 4 in May 2009. During that mission, astronauts installed two advanced-technology instruments; repaired two others; replaced a Fine Guidance Sensor, six gyros, six batteries, and the instrument computer; and outfitted certain equipment bays with protective thermal blankets. These upgrades positioned Hubble to continue its mission of discovery for years to come.