Hubble trouble will delay the HST Servicing Mission until January or February of 2009.
The radio that relays collected data to earth failed on Saturday. There is a backup radio on board HST but it hasn't been powered up since launch so it isn't known if it will work. It will take most of the week to get it powered up and all of the other components reconfigured to work with it. If it does work they can start doing science again immediately, but will be without a backup should that radio fail.
NASA doesn't want to launch a mission to service HST and leave it without a backup for a critical system so they are looking into sending up the spare that they use on Earth to diagnose problems with the similar onboard component. But that system hasn't been powered up in over 25 years either and will need to be refurbushed and upgraded before it could be installed on HST. And they will need to look at the payload to see if they need to bump something already scheduled to be flown and installed in order to make room for the replacement radio package. The current thinking is that they will have to fly STS-126 on schedule on November to keep ISS construction on track. That means that Discovery, which is scheduled for a February ISS construction flight, will have to be readied as the on demand rescue vehicle for STS-125.
I have finished the data collection for the Carolinas Low and the passage of Tropical Storm Kyle. The wind shift isn't as dramatic as we usually get when a system goes past and the barometric pressure has yet to rebound. But at least it didn't rain today and the relative humidity has broken, at least temporarily. We are supposed to get more rain tomorrow and Wednesday.
This chart has become more trouble than it is worth. The Excel worksheet on mt flash drive became corrupted again last night and only the data could be recovered so I had to recreate the chart from an old working copy of the file on my hard drive.
I had wanted to use and area chart for cloud cover but the resolution wasn't great enough to see the shirt-lived clearings so had to use a line chart like most of the other parameters.
It appears that the NOAA rain gauge at Central Park has been dropping offline a lot lately so I am not sure how good the rainfall data is.
| Date | Maximum Sustained Wind | Maximum Wind Gust | Precipitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25Sep08 | 24 mph | 35 mph | 0.15 in |
| 26Sep08 | 22 mph | 36 mph | 2.34 in |
| 27Sep08 | 14 mph | 20 mph | 0.01 in |
| 28Sep08 | 8 mph | 12 mph | 0.17 in |
| 29Sep08 | 14 mph | 18 mph | 0.01 in |
