NASA says it's back to normal

NASA said that the Hubble Space Telescope had resumed normal operations after problems with a gyroscope had put the device into safe mode.

The telescope completed its first observations on Saturday, capturing information about a distant galaxy in star formation, the agency said.

On October 5th, Hubble was put into safe mode when one of its gyroscopes stopped working. Gyroscopes allow Hubble to turn and lock on new targets to watch.

More: Astronomers may have discovered the first moon outside our solar system

NASA was able to operate an emergency gyroscope on the telescope after it had initially achieved very high rotational rates. Safeguards have been put in place in case he returns to those higher rates, but that's not likely, the agency said.

Over the last few days, the engineers have done a series of maneuvers and collected data to make sure that the telescope could rotate correctly in the sky and target targets.

Hubble was launched in April 1990 and became the first large optical telescope placed in space. Over the last 28 years, Hubble has been relaying essential data on topics such as dark matter and planet formation.