Pick up to 4 telescopes to compare side-by-side. State lives in the URL — share the link and the comparison loads exactly as you left it.
Space telescope data has underpinned 1.5 million+ scientific papers since 1990.
| Attribute | Hubble Space Telescope (HST) NASA/ESA · 🇺🇸 Active · Last updated 2026-06-01Trust: Agency-primaryⓘ Last verified Remove × | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency | NASA/ESA | NASA | NASA |
| Status | Active | Retired | Retired |
| Wavelength band | multi | optical | infrared |
| Launch year | 1990 | 2009 – 2018 | 2003 – 2020 |
| Orbit | Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ~547 km | Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit | Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit |
| Mirror / aperture | 2.4 mas of [1] ↑ Largest | 1.4 mas of [1] | 0.85 mas of [1] |
| Mass | 11,110 kgas of [1] ↑ Heaviest | 1,052 kgas of [1] | 950 kgas of [1] |
| Wavelength range | 0.115–2.5 μm (UV, optical, near-IR) | 0.43–0.89 μm (optical) | 3.6–160 μm (mid-to-far infrared) |
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| Summary | The most scientifically productive telescope ever built. Launched in 1990 and serviced five times by Space Shuttle crews, Hubble has logged over 1.6 million observations and contributed to more than 21,000 peer-reviewed publications. Its image of the Hubble Deep Field fundamentally changed our understanding of galaxy formation. | The mission that proved planets are abundant throughout the galaxy. Kepler monitored 150,000+ stars continuously for 4 years, finding that most stars host planets. A reaction wheel failure in 2013 ended the primary mission; the repurposed K2 mission (2014–2018) found 1,000+ additional planets before fuel ran out. | NASA's infrared Great Observatory, operating 2003–2020. Best known for discovering the TRAPPIST-1 system of 7 Earth-sized planets, including 3 in the habitable zone (with ground telescopes). Ran out of cryogen in 2009 but continued 'warm mission' until retirement in January 2020. |
All 9 major space telescopes with primary-source citations from NASA, ESA, STScI, and JPL. Pure URL state — bookmark or share the link and the comparison reproduces exactly.