On reflection

Abstract

Thus reported NASA on May 12, 2014 in marking the fifth anniversary of the final servicing mission that had prolonged the life of the Hubble Space Telescope to that date and hopefully would enable it to continue until the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, at that time scheduled for 2018.¹ Less than 3 weeks earlier, on April 24, the space agency had celebrated the 24th anniversary of Hubble’s deployment by STS-31 in 1990 by updating its “gee-whizz” statistics for public consumption. The telescope had traveled over 3 billion miles (4.8 billion km) around the Earth, making over 1 million observations of at least 38,000 celestial targets. From all the observations downloaded, at least 100 terabytes had been collected for further analysis and interpretation, and 884 gigabytes of data was being added to the archive every month. Over 4,000 astronomers across the globe had used Hubble data in their research and generated more than 11,000 scientific papers, “making [Hubble] one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built”.

Hubble has reinvigorated and reshaped our perception of space and

uncovered a universe where almost anything seems possible within

the laws of physics. Hubble has revealed properties of space and

time that for most of human history were only probed in the

imaginations of scientists and philosophers alike. Today,

Hubble continues to provide views of cosmic wonders

never before seen and is at the forefront of many

new discoveries.

Rob Gutro, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , May 12, 2014