After postponing the Hubble Telescope servicing mission due to an unexpected communications breakdown until at least February next year, NASA started working on re-directing the flow of data from Hubble 18-year-old 486 system to a new backup system. The team of engineers began the switch operation on Wednesday, at 9:30 a.m., after receiving positive telemetry.

On Wednesday night, the Space Telescope Operations Control Center at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center managed to turn on Side B of Hubble’s Science Instrument Control and Data handling (SIC&DH) system, as well as retrieve the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) instruments from safe mode.

The second day of operations ended well, and NASA said that by Friday, October 17, at noon, the review of the internal exposures for Hubble should be completed. This review is considered a one last check of “transparency” of switching to the redundant spacecraft electronics the Hubble team activated on the first day, NASA explained.

NASA seemed very optimistic that the Hubble operations will resume by the end of the week, although the first mission of Hubble after the glitch still remains unknown. We will have to wait for an indefinite time for the first images to be released of course, but the agency’s spokesperson said that if everything goes according to plan, it will be sooner than later.

NASA’s final mission to Hubble until at least 2014 didn’t go exactly as planned, and has been marked by repeated delays, first due to weather problems, then due to technical problems. The Atlantis mission, which was supposed to carry seven astronauts to Hubble this month, will have to stand-by until next year to execute a set of repairs meant to keep Hubble up and running for another 5 years at least.

In February, when hopefully everything will go smoothly and according to plans, NASA’s astronauts will execute 5 six-and-a-half-hour spacewalks to install the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). While the first images following the servicing missions were initially expected in early 2009, it will probably take NASA longer than that to release them.

The Wide Field Camera 3 will prove useful in the studies of dark energy and dark matter, the formation of individual stars and the discovery of remote galaxies which are currently beyond Hubble’s vision capabilities. The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph will study galaxy evolution, the formation of planets, the rise of the elements needed for life and the “cosmic web” of gas between galaxies.

The Hubble mission started back in 1990, when the shuttle Discovery launched and released the telescope into the orbit 304 nautical miles above the Earth. Since then, it has circled around Earth over 97,000 times, and has provided numerous answers in ways that would have been impossible from Earth observations.

Update: Apparently, Hubble activation went in some troubles. "Activation of the Hubble Space Telescope science instruments and resumption of science observations have been suspended following two anomalies seen in systems onboard the telescope on Thursday," NASA said in a statement. "All of the telescope's payloads are back in safe mode condition while engineers perform troubleshooting. An updated status report with more information will be issued shortly."

In a report posted on its website NASA said taht an anomaly occurred during the last steps of the commanding to the Advanced Camera for Surveys. At 1:40 pm, when the low voltage power supply to the ACS Solar Blind Channel was commanded on, software running in a microprocessor in ACS detected an incorrect voltage level in the Solar Blind Channel and suspended ACS.

Then at 5:14 pm, the Hubble spacecraft computer sensed the loss of a "keep alive" signal from the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer in the SIC&DH and correctly responded by safing the NSSC-I and the science instruments. It is not yet known if these two events were related. The investigation into both anomalies is underway. All data has been collected and is being analyzed.