NASA fully recovers Hubble telescope's instruments after month-long shutdown

NASA has successfully recovered all instruments of the Hubble Space Telescope over a month after the observatory suffered a glitch and went into ‘safe mode’. The agency informed on Tuesday, that the Hubble team revived the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph following which all four instruments of Hubble are back to normal. The telescope was put into the safe mode configuration in late October after it suffered a glitch that resulted in the loss of specific synchronization messages that the telescope's instruments used to respond to data requests and commands correctly. Talking about the recovery, NASA said in a statement-

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.

Instruments of the Hubble telescope

The Hubble space telescope observes the universe with three major instruments that are its cameras, spectrographs and interferometers. Hubble is equipped with two cameras-   the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which work collectively to provide wide-field imaging over a broad range of wavelengths. Since the telescope was in safe mode, all of these cameras along with other instruments were shut and the science operations were halted. 

Next are the spectrographs that work by breaking light down to its component parts, similar to how a prism splits white light into a rainbow. According to NASA, Hubble currently uses the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) that provide scientists with detailed spectral data for a variety of celestial objects. The spectrographs were the latest instruments to be recovered for the resumption of scientific operations. Other major instruments are the interferometers which serve a dual purpose by helping the telescope maintain a steady aim as well as serve as a scientific instrument. Currently, there are three interferometers, called the Fine Guidance Sensors, aboard Hubble and help in measuring the relative positions and brightnesses of stars.

Now that Hubble has completed 31 years of service technical faults and glitches in its system have now become frequent. However, NASA says that the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch on December 22, will work collectively with Hubble to make more significant discoveries.

Image: Twitter/@NASA