Deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope, 1990.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was put into orbit from the Space Shuttle Discovery, mission STS-31, on 24th April 1990. In this picture taken from Discovery, HST is shown still in the grasp of the Shuttle's robot arm, with the Earth in the background. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was designed to see seven times further into space than had been possible before, without the distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere. Problems with its giant mirror meant that it did not initially work as well as expected. Corrective optics were installed in 1993, greatly improving the telescope's performance, enabling it to view the Universe in unprecedented detail. It has photographed objects 13 billion light years away, giving an insight into the early Universe.