NASA released a statement last Wednesday that the Webb Space Telescope's instruments have been in safety mode intermittently since December, however, science operations resumed earlier this week. During this period of safe mode, all of Webb's non-essential systems were shut down several times, meaning that no science operations were active and, of course, making it impossible to perform any kind of observations. The US aerospace agency has since reported that the problem has been resolved.
Valued at over 10 billion dollars, the "Webb" telescope has as its main purpose the study not only the observation of stars, but the study of the evolution of galaxies and formation processes of these stars and planets, through infrared wavelengths.
Through the NASA press release, it is also possible to understand that this bug was responsible for the activation of the attitude control system, which guides the direction in which this observatory should be pointed.
A continuation of the original article via Gizmodo can be read here.
