NASA Hubble Telescope is back with a stunning image after a long mysterious glitch

© Science: NASA, ESA, STScI, Julianne Dalcanton (UW) Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Hubble’s first images after a mysterious glitch shows a pair of unusual colliding galaxies on the left and a large spiral galaxy on the right.

The Hubble Telescope has returned to operational status after nearly a month-long mysterious glitch that put NASA scientists in quite a frenzy.

In a statement on Saturday, NASA said engineers were able to successfully switch the spacecraft to backup hardware, a process that started on July 15, after a computer anomaly occurred on June 13.

“I’m thrilled to see that Hubble has its eye back on the universe, once again capturing the kind of images that have intrigued and inspired us for decades,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

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The telescope’s first images after the debacle include a pair of colliding galaxies and a galaxy with unusual extended arms. According to NASA statement, while most disk galaxies have an even number of spiral arms, this one had three.

© AP FILE – In this April 25, 1990 photograph provided by NASA, most of the giant Hubble Space Telescope can be seen as it is suspended in space by Discovery’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) following the deployment of part of its solar panels and antennae. The Hubble Space Telescope should be back in action soon, Friday, July 16, 2021, following a tricky, remote repair job by NASA. The orbiting observatory went dark in mid-June, with all astronomical viewing halted. (NASA via AP) ORG XMIT: NY108

The telescope will also be observing globular star clusters and aurorae on the giant planet Jupiter. Pictures from those observations have not been released by NASA yet.

The issue with the Hubble telescope started on June 13, when a 1980s-era payload computer, which is supposed to control and coordinate scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft and monitor them for health and safety purposes, stopped working. 

“After the halt occurred … the main computer stopped receiving a “keep-alive” signal, which is a standard handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is well,” NASA said in the statement obtained by USA TODAY.

At first, the team thought the problem was a degrading memory module, but attempts to switch to a backup memory module failed. 

The team then moved its attention to other pieces of hardware that could have caused the payload computer to shut down, but the culprit is still unclear. Jim Jeletic, Hubble deputy project manager at Goddard, told USA TODAY that they suspect the telescope’s Power Control Unit (PCU), which is designed to provide a steady voltage supply to the payload computer’s hardware, was at fault.

“We can’t completely prove it, unless you bring the computer back to the ground and we look at all the parts, but we suspect that either the voltage regulator was at fault for providing electricity that was a little out of range or the protective circuit was at fault,” Jeletic said.

The switch to the backup hardware took 15 hours to complete on July 15, according to Jeletic, and on July 16, the team started recovering all the instruments to operational status that were in safe-mode configuration.

“We are back to doing normal science operations,” Jeletic said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASA Hubble Telescope is back with a stunning image after a long mysterious glitch