Hubble space telescope's redundant Side B Control Unit/Science Data Formatter began to be rebooted Wednesday morning, according to NASA engineers. The orbiting eye has been out of service since late September, when a router that formats data and helps relay it to the ground failed, causing the telescope to go automatically into a “safe mode.” Nevertheless Hubble should be able to send astronomy photos back to Earth by Friday, officials said.

In order to do the switchover, NASA will reboot the telescope in the safe mode that it is currently in and issue commands to reroute circuitry through Side B rather than Side A, then start the telescope. They have to wake up computer parts that have been sleeping in space for more than 18 years.

What they are trying to do is to switch the Hubble Space Telescope over to a back-up computer which is going to allow it to get back to work. They hope that once the switch is done, the Hubble Space Telescope will be functioning normally once again.

Everybody is confident despite the fact that this is the first time that NASA has attempted to switch on a back-up computer or done any orbital networking. The computer’s malfunction forced NASA to postpone a shuttle mission this month to repair the Hubble. Instead the shuttle mission has been postponed until next year.

Art Whipple, lead mission systems engineer for Hubble at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said up to 50 scientists will be working in order to deal with the problem. "It is a complicated procedure and it is one we have not done end-to-end before," he said.