Dec. 7 (UPI) -- The Hubble Space Telescope has returned to full operation after more than a month of interruptions due to communication trouble with the orbiting observatory, NASA said Tuesday.
The historic space telescope, which has revealed startling images of stars, galaxies and other space objects since 1990, sent error codes to NASA starting Oct. 23. The observatory instruments shut automatically in a safe mode Oct. 25 as the communication problems continued.
"NASA's Hubble Space Telescope team recovered the Imaging Spectrograph on Monday ... and is now operating with all four active instruments collecting science," NASA said in a press release.
"The team will continue work on developing and testing changes to instrument software that would allow them to conduct science operations" even if members encounter more communication problems, NASA said.
NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope from the European Space Agency's launch site in South America on Dec. 22. It would provide a new, more powerful space observatory. NASA has hoped that the Hubble and Webb telescopes would work in tandem.
Hubble also experienced a month-long pause this summer when one of its main computers shut down, but NASA was able to switch to a backup computer and restart the spacecraft.
