Description

On April 24 1990 the Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on the Space Shuttle Programs 35th mission but this was no ordinary mission In its payload bay Discovery was carrying the Hubble Space Telescope with the objective of putting the telescope into orbit The Hubble telescope working in space less than 400 miles above the Earths surface produced photos of galaxies previously unseen as they existed only 500 million years before the Big Bang It was fortuitous that Hubble outlived its anticipated lifespan by many years because the launch of its successor the James Webb Space Telescope was delayed by 15 years