Hubble At 35: The Story of the Space Telescope That Cheated Death — and Redefined the Universe

On the world’s greatest space observatory

This story was originally published by , my regular newsletter covering space and science. !

Last month, Hubble celebrated its thirty-fifth year in orbit. It is a remarkable achievement. Indeed, it would be a milestone worth celebrating for any spacecraft: there are precious few, aside from the Voyagers and a handful of mostly defunct satellites, that are still sending back any useful data at all after three and a half decades of service.

Yet it is even more so for Hubble, a telescope that was once seen as little more than an audacious fantasy, that came close to cancellation, and was so flawed upon its arrival in orbit that it was almost abandoned.

Fortunately for us, Hubble survived all that. And despite the launch of the new James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s gaze is still very much in demand. Last year its operators .

Those that were lucky enough to win time seem to have put it to good use: in 2024 more than a thousand research papers were published on the data it sent back. No other space telescope, Mars rover, or deep space probe has had anything like the lifespan or productivity of Hubble.