The Hubble Space Telescope is in the sky. The image is from NASA.
The Hubble Space Telescope has had some problems.
All of the observatory's scientific instruments went into a protective "safe mode" in October due to a problem with internal messaging.
The Advanced Camera for Surveys was brought back online by Hubble team members. NASA officials wrote in an update Monday that they had recovered the observatory's Wide Field Camera 3 on Sunday. The WFC3 will resume science observations on Tuesday.
The Hubble Space Telescope has the best images.
The Hubble team did not make any changes to their parameters. Engineers have been working to bring the instruments back while investigating the root cause of the issue.
NASA officials wrote in Monday's update that the changes would allow the instruments to handle missed messages if they occur in the future.
The changes will be applied to another instrument, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, to further protect its sensitive far-ultraviolet detector. It will take several weeks for the team to complete the testing.
NASA officials said that the WFC3 is Hubble's most used instrument. During the last of five servicing missions to Hubble, the WFC3 was installed by spacewalking astronauts.
The telescope was repaired, maintained and upgraded during those missions. Hubble has been active and productive for more than 30 years.
The scope has begun to show signs of its advanced age. The observatory went offline for more than a month this summer after a glitch with its main computer. The Hubble team switched to backup hardware to fix the problem.
Hubble has five main science instruments, including the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, and the NearInfrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. Scientific data can be collected by the telescope's fine guidance sensors.
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