How Hubble works; its past, present and future; and the people behind it.
Nearly 400 years after Galileo first observed the heavens through a telescope, we continue to seek answers to age-old questions about the universe. And while the technology has evolved over the centuries, the inquiry remains essentially the same: What's out there, where did it come from, and what does it mean?
The Hubble Space Telescope's launch in 1990 sped humanity to one of its greatest advances in that journey. Hubble is a telescope that orbits Earth. Its position above the atmosphere, which distorts and blocks the light that reaches our planet, gives it a view of the universe that typically far surpasses that of ground-based telescopes. Hubble is one of NASA's most successful and long-lasting science missions. It has beamed hundreds of thousands of images back to Earth, shedding light on many of the great mysteries of astronomy. Its gaze has helped determine the age of the universe, the identity of quasars, and the existence of dark energy.
