James Webb Space Telescope suffers another hitch: Instrument down - The Register

The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is currently offline, and all science observations using the instrument will have to be rescheduled as engineers try to repair the thing.

"On Sunday, January 15, the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRISS experienced a communications delay within the instrument, causing its flight software to time out," NASA confirmed in a statement this week.

"The instrument is currently unavailable for science observations while NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) work together to determine and correct the root cause of the delay.

Together with the Fine Guidance Sensor, the NIRISS allows the telescope to point its cameras and instruments precisely to capture light from objects deep in space.

The first set of images taken by the JWST, revealed by NASA back in July last year, showed it had managed to detect water and hazy clouds on the hot gas giant WASP-96b.

But the machine has suffered a few glitches less than a year into its operations, including a grating wheel issue that temporarily took down its Mid-Infrared Instrument, as well as a software fault that impacted its attitude control system and forced it to enter safe mode for a few weeks.