NASA’s legendary Hubble space telescope celebrates its 34th birthday with a stunning photo

34 years ago, the American space agency’s Hubble space telescope was launched, which defined astronomy for decades and transformed our view of the universe. On this occasion, NASA published a recent image of the Little Libra Nebula (Messier 76) by the space telescope, which is a popular target for amateur astronomers.

The Little Libra Nebula (Messier 76) as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope

Photo: NASA/ESA/STScl

The planetary nebula is located about 3,400 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Perseus, and is formed by an expanding envelope of gas from a dying red giant. It gets its name from the two bubble-like formations surrounding the central, rod-shaped region, which we see as colorful gas clouds.

The lobes expand like inflated balloons and move away from the central star, which can be seen as a white dot, while being illuminated by its ultraviolet radiation. In the image, the gas shining with a red-light brown shade is nitrogen, and we see oxygen in blue. The star developing into a white dwarf is one of the hottest stellar remnants known to researchers, its surface (photosphere) temperature is 24 times that of the Sun.

Since its launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has made 1.6 million observations of more than 53,000 different objects. During this time, he collected nearly 184 terabytes of data, and his measurements resulted in 44,000 scientific publications. Hubble’s observing time is currently six times oversubscribed, showing that the 34-year-old instrument is in high demand even after the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.

His mission got off to a disastrous start

The space telescope, made in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), was originally scheduled to launch in 1983, but due to slips and the disaster of the space shuttle Challenger, its launch was postponed to April 24, 1990. The telescope traveling on the space shuttle Discovery (STS-31) was the largest scientific instrument put into orbit until then, which at the time cost the space agency nearly 6.7 billion dollars (adjusted for inflation).

Weeks after the launch, it was revealed that a catastrophic error had slipped into NASA’s revolutionary instrument and that its optical system did not produce a sharp image. The analysis of the recordings revealed that the problem was caused by bad grinding of the main mirror, which resulted in a deviation of 2,200 nanometers from the specified one. Although the astronomers were able to partially eliminate the effect of the error with advanced image processing procedures, it was clear that the situation could only be rectified by space correction.

This happened in December 1993, when the crew of Endeavor (STS-61) installed the COSTAR corrective optical system on the telescope, which almost perfectly corrected the spherical aberration of the main mirror. The space telescope then worked with it for 16 years, until it was dismantled during Hubble’s last overhaul (STS-125) in 2009, since by then each instrument had its own correction system.

If all goes well, Hubble can remain in operation for at least two more years, until 2026. Meanwhile, the space agency is investigating whether it would be possible to raise its orbit one last time with SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which could extend its lifespan by several years. NASA’s next space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will launch in 2027 to survey the cosmos in the infrared range.