The Hubble Space Telescope Was Deployed Into Orbit
On this day · 25 April 1990
On a single April morning, astronauts hoisted a school-bus-sized telescope above Earth and changed how we see the universe.
On April 25, 1990, the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery lifted the Hubble Space Telescope out of the orbiter’s cargo bay and released it into space. The mission, designated STS-31, had launched the day before and carried the observatory to an unusually high orbit roughly 332 nautical miles above Earth so it could peer outward with as little atmospheric interference as possible.
Deployment was delicate work. Mission specialist Steven Hawley operated the shuttle’s robotic arm, slowly raising the 43-foot telescope clear of the bay while crewmates extended its solar arrays and antennae before handoff to ground controllers.
Free of the haze and shimmer of the atmosphere, Hubble could finally see the cosmos sharply.
A joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency, Hubble went on to deliver landmark images and measurements, from refining the universe’s expansion rate to capturing galaxies billions of light-years away. Decades on, it remains one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built.
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