This is going to get buried under the other news today, but the Hubble Space Telescope suffered a significant failure over the weekend, losing the controller for its science instruments. The good news: there?s a backup on board. The bad news: it hasn?t been used since Hubble was launched in 1990 and it will be a few days until engineers can determine whether it works.

On hold: a space shuttle mission scheduled for launch on Oct. 14 to modernize the telescope.