The Universe Brought to Earth

Hubble's images took the world by storm. The cosmic wonders made visible by Hubble were soon ominpresent around the globe in endless ways, from science textbooks to scenery in the backgrounds of movies.

Bright cloud of pink, white, orange, and yellow with dark dust lanes.
A girl wears a VR headset at a crowded outdoor event with Hubble images on a table in front of her.
Many people today have never known a world without the Hubble Space Telescope. Here a child uses a virtual reality headset to explore a 3D Hubble image during an event at the National Mall in Washington D.C.
NASA

Hubble launched into space with lofty science goals aimed at helping define the age and size of the universe. And it accomplished those objectives, but its observations were so significant, and its images so powerful in capturing the imagination, that it also succeeded in driving vast and persistent attention to the study of the universe.

Hubble’s rise into orbit coincided with the rise of the internet, and a curious public found a frequently replenished treasure trove of visually stunning content in Hubble images, earning the telescope a growing audience of followers who checked its website for the latest pictures or had them delivered straight to their inboxes.

My daughter is a pediatric physical therapist in Atlanta. She called last night to tell me about a patient who was excited about something she did in school yesterday. The little girl explained that the whole class went on the NASA website and looked up the Hubble Space Telescope image for their birthday. She explained that the image for her birthday was Jupiter and went on to tell her about Jupiter. Hubble is inspiring classrooms of 2nd graders!

From a message to the Hubble Team

From a message to the Hubble Team

Hubble’s accessibility let teachers, parents, and children alike track the preparation and share in the excitement of the Hubble servicing missions and become familiar with the telescope, its instruments, its astronauts, and its accomplishments.

Middle-school children seated on the floor of a classroom point tablets toward a Hubble image of the Cat's Eye Nebula on a large screen in the front of the classroom. A Hubble scientist stands next to the screen discussing the image. The walls and nearby desks are covered with space and astronomy images.
Students learn about Hubble discoveries from a Hubble mission astronomer who visited their science class.
Laurie Sullivan @LSullivan

This brew of imagination-capturing imagery, captivating human stories, and scientific revelation pushed astronomy out of scientific papers and into the public imagination. Galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and more were suddenly visible to everyone who cared to look in detailed, multi-hued glory. Is it any wonder that people would try to find out more about what the objects were, how they worked, and what it meant about humanity’s role in the cosmos?

President Barack Obama speaks into a phone. He is seated at his desk in the Oval Office.
Hubble has been a symbol of human spirit and ingenuity for everyone from small children to the most powerful people on Earth. Here President Barack Obama makes a phone call from the Oval Office to congratulate the Servicing Mission 4 crew on the Space Shuttle Atlantis, orbiting about 350 miles above the planet's surface, on May 20, 2009
White House/Pete Souza

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