A Hubble Space Telescope timeline: 1990 launch, the mirror flaw and 1993 repair, the Deep Fields, Pillars of Creation, five servicing missions, and 35 years of discoveries.
From Lyman Spitzer's 1946 proposal to more than three decades of discoveries in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope changed astronomy. This timeline covers its launch, the flawed-mirror crisis, five servicing missions, and its most famous images.
Astronomer Lyman Spitzer publishes 'Astronomical Advantages of an Extraterrestrial Observatory', the conceptual seed of Hubble.
In 1977 Congress approves funding for the Large Space Telescope, later named for astronomer Edwin Hubble.
STScI is founded in Baltimore in 1981 to run the telescope's science operations.
The loss of Challenger grounds the shuttle fleet and delays Hubble's planned launch by several years.
Hubble launches on STS-31 on 24 April 1990 and is deployed into orbit the next day.
Weeks after launch, engineers find the primary mirror suffers spherical aberration, blurring Hubble's images.
STS-61 astronauts install COSTAR corrective optics and WFPC2 in December 1993, restoring Hubble's eyesight.
Hubble captures the fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter in July 1994.
Hubble photographs towering gas columns in the Eagle Nebula - the iconic 'Pillars of Creation' (image taken 1 April 1995).
Ten days staring at a 'blank' patch of sky reveal thousands of distant galaxies, revolutionizing views of the early universe.
STS-82 installs STIS and NICMOS, extending Hubble's reach into the infrared.
Hubble observations of distant supernovae help show the universe's expansion is accelerating - work later honored with the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.
After gyroscope failures put Hubble in safe mode, STS-103 astronauts replace all six gyros in December 1999.
STS-109 adds the Advanced Camera for Surveys and new solar arrays, boosting Hubble's discovery power.
Following the Columbia accident, NASA cancels the last shuttle servicing mission in January 2004, putting Hubble's future in doubt.
The deepest visible-light image of the universe to date reveals galaxies from a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
NASA administrator Michael Griffin approves one final shuttle flight to Hubble on 31 October 2006.
STS-125 installs Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, leaving Hubble more capable than ever.
Combining a decade of exposures, the XDF shows galaxies spanning most of cosmic history in one frame.
Hubble measures galaxy GN-z11 at a redshift of about 11, seen roughly 400 million years after the Big Bang.
A 1980s-era payload computer fault halts science for a month until NASA switches to backup hardware.
Gravitational lensing lets Hubble detect Earendel, a star whose light left it within the first billion years of the universe.
Hubble marks 35 years of operations in April 2025, still producing frontier science alongside the James Webb Space Telescope.
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