On Monday, January 30, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) recovered from a fault that hampered one of its sensors and resumed full science operations.
Launched in December 2021 and undertaking scientific observations since July 2022, the JWST has astounded the globe with its exquisite photos and ground-breaking data.
The Instrument Recovered Successfully On Friday
After a "communications delay" on January 15 resulted in problems with the telescope's Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) sensor, the Webb team spent days testing and evaluating the situation.
"Observations that were impacted by the pause in NIRISS operations will be rescheduled," the agency says in a brief statement, Space writes.
Employees from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) collaborated to debug NIRISS, which was provided by the CSA.
According to a statement released by NASA on January 24, the first problem was a communications delay within the instrument, forcing its flight software to time out.
NASA claims that the NIRISS is capable of operating in four different modes and may be called upon to serve as a camera when other JWST instruments are occupied.
As an alternative, NIRISS can perform high-contrast imaging, hunt for the light signatures of tiny exoplanet atmospheres, or study faraway galaxies.
NIRISS is used to study planetary transit spectroscopy, exoplanet transit detection, and first light detection, India Today notes.
It is a specialized instrument with three major modes, each of which targets a different wavelength range, with a wavelength range of 0.8 to 5.0 microns.
Read More: James Webb Space Telescope Captures Its First Pictures of Mars - What Does It Reveal?
The Telescope Has Glitched Before
Prior to the NIRISS bug, a problem with a grating wheel inside the observatory's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) surfaced in August 2022.
However, only one of the four observing modes supported by MIRI requires the wheel, therefore the instrument continued to operate during the recovery process.
A micrometeoroid strike was also suffered by the $10 billion telescope as it completed commissioning procedures in preparation for starting science operations.
To assist reduce some of the distortion brought on by the micrometeoroid, engineers had to start a cautious realignment of the injured mirror part.
Despite being built to endure bombardment by dust-sized particles traveling at extremely high speeds in space, Webb's mirrors were more severely damaged by the most recent encounter.
It is important to note, however, that the Medium Resolution Spectrometer impacted mode's recovery work was finished in November.
It can be remembered that another issue that forced onboard equipment to continuously enter safe mode in December also interfered with James Webb's scientific operations.
The problem, which altered the telescope's pointing, was identified as a software bug in the observatory's attitude control system.
After that problem, the observatory recovered quite fast, and on December 20 it resumed full science activities, according to Futurism.
The observatory has been at Lagrange Point 2 for almost exactly a year now, traveling a distance of one million miles, and has been supplying scientists with a wealth of data ever since.
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