On April 24, 1990, it was launched The Hubble space telescope, On board the discovery ferry, with a single objective: to observe the space beyond our atmosphere, orbiting in a circular orbit around the earth and collecting some of the most intriguing phenomena of recent years. One of his greatest milestos had to do with The famous creation pillars, a formation with interstellar gas elephant tubes of the eagle nebula, giving rise to one of the most famous photos of the known space. Thus, the Hubble has turned no less than 35 years.
NASA wanted to honor this event, emphasizing some of the most important milestones of Hubble. After almost 1.7 million observations and 430 terabytes of data sent, the Hubble has received a congratulation from the space agency commemorating its thirty -fifth birthday, publishing new images collected by the probe. NASA has assured that since this mythical launch, the Hubble has “radically transformed our understanding of the universe”, giving some of the most iconic images of the current scientific and social scene related to space.
It is not for less; According to the agency, Hubble achievements have given rise to more than 22,000 scientific articles, Until February 2025, revealing very important facts. For example, thanks to Hubble we know that the supermassive black holes They are in the heart of the great galaxies that populate the universe. A mission that, on the other hand, was about to fail almost from its beginning.
The Hubble turns 35
The Hubble space telescope has a mass of 11 tons, is cylindrical and has a length of 13.2 meters and a maximum diameter of 4.2. The total cost of the Hubble, in those years, It was 2.8 billion dollars, What would be equivalent to change to 6,866 million Added by inflation in 2025. It is a reflector type telescope, and has a 2.4 -meter primary mirror that are also combined with no less than four instruments with the capacity to obtain images and spectra. The energy is in charge of solar panels that feed the four telescope engines, their instruments and their cameras, with rechargeable batteries.
The idea behind Hubble is that this was a telescope that could be visited by a space ferry to be able to repair damaged elements and perform maintenance work. In fact, this was crucial due to a garrafal failure in its design; Shortly after the launch of the telescope, the engineers detected a polishing failure in the primary mirror, giving rise to blurred images. This occurred because the outer edge of the mirror was somewhat flatter than expected in about four hundredths of millimeters.
It was not up to three years later, by means of the STS-61 crew, which could be installed An optical correction system capable of correcting the defect of the primary mirror. Thus, the mirror is still in use today, since the system is responsible for using a camera to correct the problem of spherical aberration that affected the mirror. In this way, they were able to achieve the expected vision results from the beginning. This whole process led No less than 5 space walks made in 1993.
-They were not the only missions. Successive trips in the 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2009 served to extend the useful life of Hubble and update their hardware, Expanding its capabilities and making it the brutal observation tool that we have today, located at a height of 547 kilometers above the earth. Another important point of these maintenance missions allowed among other things Maintain the orbit of the telescope itself. The friction of the atmosphere with the telescope itself slows it down, losing height thanks to the terrestrial gravitational attraction. Therefore, it is important to push it slightly in each of these missions.
Another of Hubble’s high moments in recent years took place in 2021, when the Hubble payload computer, which controls and coordinates the instruments of the telescope failed. The computer in question led to all scientific instruments to arrange in rest mode automatically, ceasing to give signal to the main computer of the probe.
After NASA’s efforts to relive the device were unsuccessful, The help of technicians responsible for Hubble already retired In those years. These former employees who could participate in the construction of the Hubble allowed NASA to start the reserve computer on July 15 of that year, after five weeks of inactivity.
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The fact that Hubble is in a position well above the earth’s atmosphere allows you to observe the cosmos without certain turbulence or obstacles blocking your view or making it difficult. This has helped to mold a valuable understanding of the solar system itself, as well as the origins of the universe. For example, Hubble has been able to study the climate of other planets, discovered moons orbiting planets of our system as pluto and has even been able to study the sun indirectly, although the telescope was not designed for it.
In short, Hubble has been fundamental to not only understand and estimate the age of the universe, but to understand how the Hubble constant is expanded and formalized, which measures precisely this expansion. It has also allowed to advance in a very significant way the knowledge that humans have about cosmology in general in these three decades of service. About three decades that their operators hope that many more can be.
