Hubble Team Commemorates 20 Years

On April 24th, 1990, space shuttle Discovery launched the Hubble telescope. Now, twenty years later, the Hubble Telescope team is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the orbiting telescope’s release. The anniversary was commemorated by the release of an image from the Carina constellation. Specifically of a pillar of dust and gases that are compressing to form new stars. The pillar is over 3 1/2 light years long, 7500 light years distant, and the image was taken with the new Wide Field Camera 3.

During its twenty years orbiting the Earth, the Hubble Telescope has returned hundreds of thousands of images, many of which have been the basis for scientific studies and papers. It has not been without problems, however. The telescope has seen five repair missions starting with the 1993 effort that replaced faulty optics in the telescope. The latest repair mission was conducted in May 2009. During that repair mission, Wide Field Camera 3 was installed along with other upgrades. Worn out batteries and gyroscopes were also replaced giving the Hubble Telescope at least another four years of life.

NASA says this was the last visit to the telescope by the space shuttle program, but 2014 is the expected launch date of Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.