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 | James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NASA/ESA/CSA · 🇺🇸 Active · Last updated 2026-06-01Trust: Agency-primaryⓘ Last verified Remove × | Hubble Space Telescope (HST) NASA/ESA · 🇺🇸 Active · Last updated 2026-06-01Trust: Agency-primaryⓘ Last verified Remove × | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency | NASA | NASA/ESA/CSA | NASA/ESA |
| Status | Retired | Active | Active |
| Wavelength band | optical | infrared | multi |
| Launch year | 2009 – 2018 | 2021 | 1990 |
| Orbit | Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit | Sun-Earth L2 point (~1.5 million km from Earth) | Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ~547 km |
| Mirror / aperture | 1.4 mas of [1] | 6.5 mas of [1]18 gold-coated beryllium hexagonal segments ↑ Largest | 2.4 mas of [1] |
| Mass | 1,052 kgas of [1] | 6,200 kgas of [1]Includes 2,447 kg for the primary mirror assembly | 11,110 kgas of [1] ↑ Heaviest |
| Wavelength range | 0.43–0.89 μm (optical) | 0.6–28.5 μm (optical red through mid-IR) | 0.115–2.5 μm (UV, optical, near-IR) |
| Key missions |
|
|
|
| Summary | 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. | The most powerful space telescope ever launched. Operating at -233°C at the L2 point, JWST can observe the universe's first light from ~100 million years after the Big Bang. Its first full-color images, released July 2022, immediately set records for the most distant galaxies observed. | 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. |
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.