The Hubble Space Telescope orbits with Earth in the background after release from the space shuttle Columbia at the conclusion of Servicing Mission 3B in March 2002. Hubble has been in low-Earth orbit since 1990.
NASA
NASA announced today plans for a fifth servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Shuttle astronauts will visit the telescope to extend and improve the observatory's capabilities through 2013.
Hubble precisely measured the age of the universe. It found evidence of dark energy. It delivered images of distant galaxies in the young universe. And now, with the state-of-the-art instruments to be installed during Servicing Mission 4 (SM4), Hubble will look into the universe with new eyes, surpassing even its previous vision.
