The Hubble Space Telescope, Earth's Super Eye in the Sky, has lost the use of its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).  The main cam has been offline since June 19 and managers are scrambling to turn to its other cameras and keep its operations going.

Engineers have not yet identified what caused the ACS to go into a sleep state but they aren't that worried. "We're very optimistic that the camera will be fixed", said Ed Ruitberg, associate program manager for Hubble at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

While this is not the first time the ACS has gone into safe mode the current problem could be more serious requiring more than a standard software reboot. "We're still investigating the problem and working on all sorts of contingencies," said Max Mutchler at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "We're hoping for the best but preparing for other contingencies."

Various solutions have been planned but they can't be implemented until the core problem is known. "Right now we don't know what the core problem is," Mutchler said. Ruitberg thinks the most likely problem is a low-voltage power supply interface. If this is the case, he said it can be easily remedied using redundant electronics to bypass the problem area by June 30.