It was soon discovered that there was an aberration on the space telescope’s primary mirror. The photos it returned were a little hazy – a little, but enough to be very worried.

It would not focus point-like objects like stars into tiny brilliant dots. They started arriving in late May 1990 and did show improvements over Earth-based telescopes and previous space telescopes, but quite soon, it was clear that something was terribly wrong with the telescope. We corrected the labels relating to the mission and help our visitors understand the problems, but then the day finally came, and we were anxiously awaiting data, and most of all images. By the early 1980s we had 1/5th scale high definition models of both the telescope’s optical assembly and the spacecraft itself on display, expecting Hubble to launch soon. The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 changed all that. Since the late 1970s, soon after the Space Telescope project was approved and funded by Congress, the Museum started collecting objects: concept models, drawings, reports, etc. We do this sadly aware of the fact that the Museum is closed to the public for the foreseeable future and we are unable to celebrate Hubble’s incredible work in person.

Two weeks later, it started to send back scientific data.Īs we observe the 30th anniversary of Hubble’s exploration of our universe, take a virtual peek at the displays the National Air and Space Museum has provided visitors over the past few decades of Hubble’s life. On April 25, it was deployed from the shuttle in a slow and purposeful dance orchestrated by the astronauts and the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System arm. On April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Hubble telescope drawing