Hubble has been offline for more than two weeks (Image: NASA)
The Hubble Space Telescope was in the final stages of recovery on Thursday after NASA successfully bypassed a faulty computer and resurrected an 18-year-old spare from orbital hibernation.
The faulty computer, which is needed to collect and process data from science instruments, prompted NASA to postpone a long-awaited space shuttle mission to service the telescope.
The flight has been rescheduled for February, when the crew will attempt to replace the failed computer. It remains to be seen whether NASA will be able to launch the mission in February, however, as the replacement part has glitches of its own.
Advertisement
Engineers began the delicate task of switching to a backup system to collect and process Hubble’s data on Wednesday.
“Everything’s going perfectly,” said NASA spokeswoman Susan Hendrix, with the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The telescope was back in automated mode, rekindling connections between its instruments and the computer. Science observations are expected to resume on Friday morning, Hendrix said.
