Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope captures colliding galaxies image after mystery glitch
- Hubble Space Telescope operating again after nearly a month offline
- First images snapped since outage include set of unusual galaxies
Nasa said engineers successfully switched the spacecraft to backup hardware, a process that started July 15 after a computer anomaly occurred 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.
The telescope’s first images after the debacle include a pair of colliding galaxies and a galaxy with unusual extended arms. According to Nasa, most disk galaxies have an even number of spiral arms, but this one has three.
The telescope will observe globular star clusters and aurorae on the giant planet Jupiter.
On June 13, a 1980s-era payload computer, which is supposed to control and coordinate scientific instruments aboard the Hubble and monitor them for health and safety purposes, stopped working.