NASA returns Hubble Space Telescope back to full science operations
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Hubble is back in business.
The Hubble Space Telescope is once again fully operational after a glitch took its science instruments offline. Yesterday (Dec. 6), NASA’s Hubble team recovered the observatory’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, the last of the telescope’s instruments to be taken online after the recent issues, the agency announced today (Dec. 7).
“The team will continue work on developing and testing changes to instrument software that would allow them to conduct science operations even if they encounter several lost synchronization messages in the future,” NASA wrote in the announcement.
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time
In late October, Hubble experienced a glitch with the synchronization of its internal communications. This took all four of the scope’s science instruments offline and temporarily made Hubble operational. The first of the instruments to come back online, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), was operational again by Nov. 7, while the four remaining instruments stayed in a “safe mode” for protection.
The Hubble team will continue work to prevent such issues in the future, and the first such change will be a software update scheduled to be installed in mid-December on Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph instrument. Hubble’s other science instruments will also receive software updates in the coming months, NASA said in the statement.
Hubble will soon be joined in space by another powerful telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Webb observes in infrared so it can make unique observations that complement those of Hubble.
“With the launch of the Webb Telescope planned for later this month, NASA expects the two observatories will work together well into this decade, expanding our knowledge of the cosmos even further,” NASA added in the announcement.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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