NASA's space observatory, the Hubble telescope is twenty years old. It was sent into space on April 24, 1990, launched from the space shuttle Discovery. It is possibly the most educational, entertaining, and useful NASA project of them all, more important than the moon walk, in that it has brought, and continues to bring outer space right to our computer screens. We have had twenty years of incredible, awesome images of stars, and of worlds, and of  objects beyond out planet  -- data to scientists -- a delight to layman, in every part of the world.

On Hubble's 20th anniversary  NASA  reminds the public that, "Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology. To date, Hubble has observed more than 30,000 celestial targets and amassed more than a half-million pictures in its archive. The last astronaut servicing mission to Hubble in May 2009 made the telescope 100 times more powerful than when it was launched."