This week represents the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched on April 24th, 1990, the telescope has been hard a work ever since opening our eyes to the universe around us. NASA's video
25 Years Started Here: Kennedy and the Launch of the Hubble is a nice place to start in revisiting the history of the space telescope. The Hubble was a significant achievement as well as an expensive piece of hardware that required five separate space shuttle missions to keep it functioning.
You can see plenty of images, interviews, and videos at the
Hubble Space Telescope channel on YouTube, or visit hubblesite.org for some of Hubble's top shots (such as the Horsehead Nebula shown here). The Hubble allowed all of us to see an amazing universe in ways that not even the science fiction writers could imagine. The
inventory of images is awe inspiring, including the image below called "Light Echo From Star V838 Monocerotis."
As far as the future beyond Hubble, we can look forward to the James Webb Space Telescope, expected to be launched in 2018. In another
video, NASA Astrophysicist Dr. Amber Straughn discusses both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. The James Web Space Telescope will be stationed far beyond the moon and no longer in a position for future repairs, so we are entering into a new realm where we need to get everything perfect the first time. No pressure, of course. This additional NASA
video shows the complexity of the telescope's deployment.
