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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 | NASA/ESA | ESA |
| Status | In Development | Active | Active |
| Wavelength band | infrared | multi | multi |
| Launch year | 2027 | 1990 | 2023 |
| Orbit | Sun-Earth L2 point | Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ~547 km | Sun-Earth L2 point |
| Mirror / aperture | 2.4 mas of [1]Same aperture as Hubble but 100× wider field of view ↑ Largest | 2.4 mas of [1] ↑ Largest | 1.2 mas of [1] |
| Mass | ~4,200 kgas of [1]Estimated; uses repurposed NRO mirror donated to NASA | 11,110 kgas of [1] ↑ Heaviest | 2,160 kgas of [1] |
| Wavelength range | 0.48–2.3 μm (optical + NIR) | 0.115–2.5 μm (UV, optical, near-IR) | 0.55–2.02 μm (optical VIS + near-IR NISP) |
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| Summary | NASA's next flagship astronomy mission. Roman's 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument (WFI) has Hubble-equivalent resolution but covers 0.28 square degrees per pointing — 100× wider than Hubble. Its 5-year primary mission will census dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanet populations across the Milky Way. | 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. | ESA's dark energy explorer, launched July 1, 2023. Euclid will map the 3D distribution of ~1.5 billion galaxies across a third of the sky over 6 years, measuring dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision. Its first science-quality images, released February 2024, demonstrated exceptional optics. |
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.