Hubble Space Telescope

HST

Mission Profile

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is NASA's flagship optical/ultraviolet space observatory, launched on 24 April 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery to a 547 km circular orbit and one of the most scientifically productive instruments in history. After a spherical aberration in its primary mirror was discovered and corrected by the first servicing mission in December 1993, Hubble has delivered transformative astronomy across wavelengths from near-infrared through ultraviolet. Key discoveries include determining the universe's expansion rate through Cepheid measurements leading to the Nobel-winning discovery of dark energy, identifying supermassive black holes at galactic centers, and producing the deep field images revealing thousands of galaxies in small patches of seemingly blank sky. Five servicing missions progressively upgraded Hubble's instruments, with the last in 2009 extending its operational life into the 2030s.