30 years after its first repair mission, Hubble continues to observe the cosmos. 30 years ago, on the very early morning of Dec. 2, 1993, the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the STS-61 crew launched on a high-stakes mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been observing the cosmos for over 30 years. The telescope has made more than 1.5 million observations, and astronomers have used the data to publish over 20,000 scientific publications

The Hubble Space Telescope has helped answer some of the biggest questions about space, including: 

• How old is the universe?: 13.8 billion years old 
• Do black holes exist?: Yes 
• Is the expansion of the universe slowing down?: No, it’s accelerating 

The Hubble Space Telescope has also investigated our solar system and the atmospheres of planets around other suns. 

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990. Five Space Shuttle missions have repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope. The first repair mission launched on December 2, 1993.

NASA expects Hubble to continue working for a few more years. The telescope is expected to remain operational until 2030 or 2040. Hubble will continue to work as long as its components operate and it provides a good service to the scientific community. 

Hubble’s last servicing mission took place in 2009. Engineers estimated back then that it would last until around 2016. However, Hubble’s technology was upgraded and improved during the five servicing missions. 

Hubble is working in tandem with other space observatories including the James Webb Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been in use since its launch in 1990. It was originally called the Large Space Telescope and was conceived in the 1940s. The project was delayed and faced budget issues. 

The Hubble Space Telescope is about the size of a school bus and weighs 24,500 pounds. It uses two 25-foot solar panels to gather energy from the sun. The telescope orbits the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour and takes 15 minutes to rotate 90 degrees

The Hubble Space Telescope’s final servicing mission was in May 2009. The mission was originally scheduled for 2004, but was postponed and then canceled after the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia. NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin later approved the mission. 

The fifth and final servicing mission, STS-125, was planned as an 11-day assignment. The mission’s goals were to: 

• Replace two instruments 
• Fix two more instruments 
• Replace gyros 
• Replace batteries 
• Replace other components 

The mission was intended to extend the telescope’s life and improve its scientific capabilities.

Hubble was designed to accommodate regular servicing and equipment upgrades while in orbit. Instruments and limited life items were designed as orbital replacement units. Five servicing missions (SM 1, 2, 3A, 3B, and 4) were flown by NASA Space Shuttles, the first in December 1993 and the last in May 2009.

The Hubble Space Telescope is expected to lose altitude and begin falling back to Earth around 2040. NASA has plans to give the telescope a propulsion system that would either send it into the Pacific Ocean or higher up into orbit. 

Hubble’s orbit is relatively stable, so it won’t be immediately de-orbited when it stops working. However, it will eventually need to be brought down in a controlled re-entry to ensure that any debris does not land in inhabited areas. 

Hubble’s low-Earth orbit will decay in the mid-2030s without further boosts, ending the telescope’s mission regardless of funding. NASA announced a five-year extension of science operations with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2016. 

NASA’s proposed Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor space telescope, or LUVOIR, might be Hubble’s successor. LUVOIR is a general-purpose observatory capable of observing in multiple wavelengths. If funded, LUVOIR wouldn’t launch until 2039 at the earliest. (Full article source google)

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