Over the past week, the NASA engineers have been working extensively on putting Hubble back on track, and on Thursday they announced the Hubble Space Telescope Science Instrument Control and Data Handling system had been reactivated. Furthermore, NASA was confident that on Saturday, October 25, the Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 will be able to resume observations.

The problem started last month, when one of Hubble’s instruments broke down, forcing NASA to postpone the Hubble repair mission for mid October. However, just as preparations entered finish line, NASA announced a communications breakdown. According to them, restoring Hubble’s functions required an extensive work, and decided to postpone the repair mission until February next year.

Last week, NASA turned on the Hubble hardware modules to their side B, redirecting data from the telescope’s 18-year-old 486 system to the backup system. The agency representatives were very optimistic that they would be able to resume all activities by the end of last week, however, another unexpected glitch forced them to take an extra week to solve the problem.

On October 16, NASA reported two anomalies in the systems onboard the telescope. The first event forced the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to suspend operations, after a power source in the Solar Blind Camera’s low voltage power supply failed to turn on.

A second problem occurred 4 hours later, when the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SIC&DH) system caused the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer (NSSC-1) to stop issuing the keep-alive signal.

Over the weekend, the team of engineers continued investigating the unexpected occurrences, and on October 23, they announced that the events were most-likely responses to a self-clearing short-circuit, or a transient open-circuit, in the Science Instrument Control and Data Handling system. According to them, that not highly improbable, considering the hardware had 19 years of inactivity.

As a result of that, NASA revealed plans to power on the spacecraft computer and monitor it for 24 hours to assess its operations. The agency said it will continue to issue updates on the Hubble Telescope’s planetary camera science on Saturday.

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.

The telescope’s substantial help with the astronomy’s progress over the last 19 years is widely recognized. According to the scientists, there are still many projects that will demand its assistance. In almost two decades of activity, the Hubble Telescope took over 750,000 photos of distant never before seen places and has offered answers to many questions related to our surroundings.