Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), named after past astronomer Edwin Hubble, orbits 340 miles above our planet Earth. It has made more important discoveries than any other telescope in its 27 year history. It is expected to last another 15 years before its demise.
Hubble Space Telescope. Several important Hubble discoveries include the age of our universe at 13.7 billion years from seeing the most distant stars in the universe, our universe is still expanding since 5 billion years ago, calculating well over Xtrillion stars, calculating billions of galaxies, finding black holes exist in the center of each galaxy where its gravity is the strongest and literally sucks in stars and other objects, and dark energy has helped form our universe.
HST has been upgraded five times with new instruments to view our universe. This helps astronomers and astrophysicists make new discoveries and finding new mysteries in our universe. One of the more important discoveries is finding life on other planets. HST found water on a very distant planet as well as water on one of Jupiter’s moons, which indicates a great possibility of life using the HST spectrograph.
Hubble is used by the worldwide astronomy community daily with its intense scheduling beyond one year. A new larger space telescope called the James Webb Telescope will be launched in 2019. This is another great use of technology in solving the great mysteries of our universe. Visit nasa.gov/hubble to see many of the inspiring photos sent by Hubble.
~ Bob Larson is a technologist, photo-journalist, and Marketing Director for 50 Plus.