NASA engineers have managed to power up the Hubble Space Telescope’s backup computer, but new glitches halted the mission. On Thursday, the observatory was switched to a backup computer and the move reactivated three instruments but two new errors occurred.

The first error involved a power unit on one of the Hubble's cameras, while the other involved another computer system. NASA doesn’t know whether the two errors are linked, said Art Whipple, Hubble manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA had hoped for a fast recovery of the 18-year-old orbiting observatory after an earlier computer breakdown, but the new glitches delayed the mission again. The computer which broke down last month was made with the purpose of sending data back to Earth.

"The soonest that we would be back doing full science would be late next week," said Mr. Whipple.

NASA tried to remedy the problem by remotely switching over from the failed system to an on-board redundant system. At first, all seemed to go well, but then the two above-mentioned errors occurred. The exact problems aren’t yet known by NASA, but they are working to find out the causes and what can be done.

"We are in the early stage of going through a mountain of data that's been downloaded over the last 24 hours," Whipple said at a press conference.

The first error occurred as NASA engineers were switching science instruments from safe mode to operation mode. When they switched on the Advanced Camera for Surveys, they found an incorrect voltage level and decided to cancel the operation. A few hours later, the HST’s main computer detected the loss of a signal from another onboard system and immediately turned the science instruments in safe mode.

The Hubble Space Telescope has helped scientists change their perspective on the universe’s origin, evolution and contents by delivering snap shots of far-away galaxies and outer space phenomena.