25 Years of Hubble

On April 24, 1990, NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off from the Florida coast carrying precious cargo that was
destined to revolutionize the way humans see the cosmos. The Hubble Space Telescope had been decades in the
making, the dream of astronomers who yearned to study the universe with a clear view unhindered by the distorting
influence of Earth’s atmosphere. A day after launch, Discovery’s astronauts fulfilled that dream by releasing Hubble
into orbit hundreds of miles above the ground, and more importantly, above the bulk of our planet’s atmosphere.