He had been stationary for over a month.
The Hubble Space Telescope, which has delighted the world for more than thirty years with its splendid images of the distant universe, has been in working order again since Thursday, although it will take a while to see its instruments working and transmitting Datas.
NASA announced on Friday that it had succeeded in starting the backup computer, the original computer having failed since June 13.
“The Hubble team is now monitoring the hardware to make sure everything is working properly.
The team also initiated the process of recovering scientific instruments "in normal configuration, explains the US space agency.
When the base computer had shut down, the instruments had automatically placed themselves in the secure configuration.
Over 1.5 million views of the universe
The recovery of the instruments should take more than a day, underlines NASA, the Hubble team ensuring in particular that "the instruments are at stable temperatures".
“The team will then perform an initial calibration of the instruments before resuming normal scientific operations.
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The Hubble Space Telescope backup payload computer was successfully brought online after a successful switch to backup hardware.
Following a short checkout period, the science instruments will be brought back to operational status.
- Hubble (@NASAHubble) July 16, 2021
In 31 years of service, Hubble has made more than 1.5 million observations of approximately 50,000 celestial objects and, according to NASA figures, more than 18,000 scientific papers have been published with its data.
Among the discoveries that we owe to him, that on the acceleration of the expansion of the universe as well as the very first atmospheric studies of exoplanets.
Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, should be launched next November from Kourou by an Ariane 5 rocket.