The Hubble telescope was launched in 1990, April 24. The Hubble was named after Edwin P. Hubble, the astronomer. The Hubble has extended greatly though time in its's scientific powers. The Hubble has been working for 16 years. The Hubble is a large space based observatory which has revolutionized observations of space by giving deep and clear pictures of our universe. The farthest objects the Hubble has seen are well over 12 galaxies, each billions of light years away. Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) is what these distant observations have been named.
 

The Hubble has an elliptical orbit around the Earth. It orbits the Earth every 97 minutes, 575 kilometers (360 miles) above the Earth's surface. Compared to ground based telescopes you wouldn't say the Hubble is particularly large. The primary mirror with a diameter of 2.4 meters (94.5 inches) the Hubble would, at the most, be a medium sized telescope.
 

Parts of the Hubble include the Solar Arrays, FGS, COSTSTAR, ACS, Gyros, WFPC2, NICMOS, and the Batteries. These special parts of the Hubble are the science instruments and the engineering components.
 

NASA is currently in the process of deciding whether to commit to another mission called “SM4” either in late 2007 or early 2008. If “SM4” happens, they will put in two new instruments –Cosmic Origins Spectrogram and Wide-Field Camera 3- which would give Hubble  more powerful capabilities than ever before.

The Hubble has taken wondrous pictures of space, such as the Eagle Nubula Pillars, and many others. The information the Hubble has sent to Earth is high in scientific value.
 

The Hubble will hopefully continue to send more information, and broaden the minds of mankind thoughout the years. To send even more pictures of history and answer the questions of space that we have been wondering for years, and forever more to broaden space all together.
 

Credits:

Hubble Telescope: http://hubble.nasa.gov/index.php
http://quest.nasa.gov/hst/about/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope
Picture: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Eagle_nebula_pillars.jpg