NASA announces its iconic space telescope has stopped working

NASA has taken to its blog and social channels to announce that the Hubble Space Telescope has stopped working following the detection of a gyroscope

The space agency explained via its blogpost that the Hubble Space Telescope entered safe mode on November 23 due to an "ongoing gyroscope (gyro) issue", and that the space telescope's instruments remain in good health. NASA further explained that Hubble entered into safe mode automatically when one of its three gyroscopes provided faulty readings. For those that don't know, Hubble's gyro's measure the turn rates of telescope, which is a component of the telescope knowing which direction it's pointing in.

Furthermore, NASA revealed that Hubble first entered into safe mode on November 19, but was promptly recovered by ground teams that were able to get Hubble back to an appropriate level for scientific operations. However, the following day, the gyro problem reared its head again, resulting in scientific operations being suspended again on November 21, which was followed by another recovery and then another failure on November 23.

This isn't the first time that Hubble has been brought offline, as it was only in June that the iconic space telescope was knocked offline due to a problem with its payload computer.