Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is an American space probe in earth orbit that explores objects if space. It is operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute. The telescope was launched April 25, 1990 and began operations soon thereafter.
After launch, it was found that all of the images from the telescope were out of focus. An investigation found that the primary mirror of the telescope had been ground to the wrong radius, preventing the telescope from properly focusing. In December, 1993, the Space Shuttle Endeavor, during mission STS-61, captured the telescope and added a lens correcting for the defect in the primary mirror. Since then, the Hubble Space Telescope has been an invaluable tool to astronomers.
The current mission of the telescope was recently extended by NASA. On January 17, 2004, primarily due to the recent Colombia shuttle accident and the perceived risk of shuttle flights, NASA announced that the final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope would not be funded. Scientists around the world and members of congress put pressure on NASA to reconsider, and on October 31, 2006, NASA announced it would go ahead with a Hubble Space Telescope service mission in 2008. This fourth mission to Hubble should effectively extend the life of the telescope by another decade.
The telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble whose observations of galaxies led him to the discovery that the universe is expanding.