The two telescopes that I worked on that had no such problems were XTE (aka RXTE) and AXAF (aka Chandra). I only did a little bit of work for AXAF, but I worked on XTE for years. In addition to some other miscellaneous software, I wrote the code that let the scientists configure the parameters of the on-board data processing computers.
There were some serious issues with AXAF, though. The CCDs were damaged by some sort of unexpected particle radiation. Prior to this damage, the CCDs on AXAF were the most carefully calibrated CCDs ever manufactured. Or so I was led to believe. And the damage, although not fatal to the mission, did ruin the calibration. This was pretty discouraging to a colleague down the hall, since he had spent years making it so perfect.
The two telescopes that I worked on that had no such problems were XTE (aka RXTE) and AXAF (aka Chandra). I only did a little bit of work for AXAF, but I worked on XTE for years. In addition to some other miscellaneous software, I wrote the code that let the scientists configure the parameters of the on-board data processing computers.
There were some serious issues with AXAF, though. The CCDs were damaged by some sort of unexpected particle radiation. Prior to this damage, the CCDs on AXAF were the most carefully calibrated CCDs ever manufactured. Or so I was led to believe. And the damage, although not fatal to the mission, did ruin the calibration. This was pretty discouraging to a colleague down the hall, since he had spent years making it so perfect.