A little over two weeks NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope was knocked offline due to a glitch. However, it seems as though Hubble has recovered from the glitch and will resume its scientific findings.

Exciting news for Asgardia as they work toward building a demilitarized and free scientific base of knowledge in space.

On Oct. 5, Hubble was put into a protective "safe mode" because one of its orientation-maintaining gyroscopes failed. Mission team members tried to set up a backup gyro, but that instrument was also failing, forcing them to return to anomalous readings.

But, various troubleshooting activities performed over the past week seem to have brought the balky gyro to cooperate, according to an announcement by NASA officials made yesterday (Oct. 22). The mission team now needs to run a few more tests to make sure everything's working correctly.

What’s more, this week marks one year since astronomers happened upon an unusual object moving through space not too far from the Earth's orbit. After a few days, they realized it could not be an ordinary asteroid or comet because its path demonstrated that it was not gravitationally bound to the solar system. Thus, it became the first interstellar body ever found in our solar system that came from outside it. It was given the Hawaiian name 'Oumuamua, meaning "scout."

For a long time, Astronomers believe that comets and asteroids exist in other planetary systems and it’s possible that 'Oumuamua came from one of them. Most present models of our solar system propose that such small bodies are leftovers from the era of planet formation, and other planetary systems should also have generated comets and asteroids. Examining them would provide robust insights into the similarities and differences in planetary system formation. However, to date, it has been impossible: the presumed large populations of comets and asteroids discovered in exoplanetary circumstellar disks are far away, and their individual members are faint and spatially unresolved.

Moreover, a new study proposes that salty water, which lies just beneath Mars’ surface could contain enough dissolved oxygen to host microbes, and maybe even simple animal life like sponges, in certain areas.

An exciting development for Asgardia as they work toward building habitable platforms in low-Earth orbit.

These surprising results could help scientists' reform their understanding of the Red Planet's habitability, both from the past and currently, according to study team members.

Author Vlada Stamenković, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, explained that these are exciting times, in particular, because there is so much more work still required, to learn more about Martian habitability. Stamenković added that they hope thinking of Mars as a potential place for life to exist, maybe even today creates excitement in the scientific community and the larger world.

And in other news, the much-anticipated Exodus 1 is HTC’s blockchain phone, and the company has just released actual specs for it. What’s more, it is now available to sign up for preorders. The phone comes with a wallet that’s kept in a secure area “protected from the Android OS,” as reported in a press release, which can be used to hold the keys to your cryptocurrency and tokens like CryptoKitties.

Are you excited about the possibility of small animal life forms living in Mars? 

Are you going to get your hands on the new HTC blockchain phone?

Let us know which news excites you the most and why in the comments below!