The Hubble Telescope is celebrating 30 years of space exploration and outstanding discoveries on April 24th.

His journey started thirty years ago, on April 24, 1990, in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center from Florida. It was carried and deployed into Earth orbit on April 25, by the space shuttle, Discovery.

Here are some of the most spectacular missions that the Hubble ever had:

  1. Finding the age of the universe, which is currently estimated at 13.8 billion years. Also, adding to the Nobel Prize winning theory that the universe is expanding we now know that it is also accelerating.
  2. Analyzing extrasolar planets, for example their atmospheres, in which it found oxygen, carbon but most importantly water vapor. When Hubble was launched in 1990, we were not aware of the existence of other planets outside our solar system and now we can determine their compositions.
  3. Discovering more black holes! We now know that all of the galaxies contain black holes and the bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole.
  4. Pluto’s 4 new moons were also spotted by the Hubble Telescope. Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx are the newest additions to Pluto’s discovered moons.
  5. Exploring Jupiter and the impacts of other bodies with the big planet. The latest impact was in 2009 when an asteroid entered Jupiter’s atmosphere. Also, we found out that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is disappearing gradually 

Thank you Hubble and good luck in your future explorations!