This bus-sized piece of scientific equipment has become a household name, thanks to the incredible scientific insights and iconic images it has returned over the course of a quarter-century in low-Earth orbit. Join us as we celebrate the history and achievements of NASA's flagship space telescope.

Calls for the development of what would later become the Hubble Space Telescope began to be heard soon after the end of World War II, as renowned theoretical physicist and astronomer Lyman Spitzer espoused the virtues of an orbital telescope in his paper Astronomical Advantages of an Extra-Terrestrial Observatory. Spitzer argued that a space telescope would be free to gaze into the heavens without suffering the detrimental effects of Earth's atmosphere – a protective shell of gases made up predominantly of nitrogen and oxygen, which distorts or even blocks the light emitted or reflected by distant celestial objects.