Mind-boggling images from 25 years of the Hubble Telescope

NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope, 25 years ago this week, on April 24, 1990. The $2.5 billion project has transformed the way the public and scientists understand the epic scale and cosmic structures of space

The telescope is equipped with cameras and instruments capable of capturing images of space from as far as 3.4 billion light-years away. It has made around 1.2 million observations since 1990, completing a full orbit of Earth every 97 minutes, traveling at about 17,000 mph (about 27,358 km/h).

The Hubble Space Telescope was last serviced in 2009 and will likely end its mission in the next five years, but it has a successor. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to launch in 2018. Like the Hubble before it, JWST is designed to help Earthlings gaze more deeply into the universe than ever before, hopefully catching glimpses of some of the first galaxies that formed in the early cosmos. Read more...