Hubble gets green-lit to return to full operation

After being put in safe mode to protect the scientific instruments aboard, the Hubble Space Telescope returns to full scientific operations.

On December 6th, NASA recovered the final instrument aboard Hubble, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The previous instrument to be recovered was the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on November 28th, and before that the Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys on November 22rd and November 7th respectively.

Hubble initially went into safe mode on October 25th in response to the loss of internal synchronization messages. As NASA has worked to bring the scientific instruments back online, no synchronization message issues have been detected since November 1st.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope team plan to continue developing and testing software for the instruments to allow them to continue science operations despite lost synchronization messages if they happen to occur. The first update is scheduled for installation in mid-December, for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, with similar updates expected for the other instruments in the following months.

"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," said NASA in a December 8th statement.