Hubble's Amazing Universe

The famous Hubble Space Telescope marks its 25^th anniversary of observations next month. To mark the occasion  on Far Future Horizons we present Hubble's Amazing Universe.

This documentary reveals the amazing discoveries made by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope has explored the creation of stars and planets, the glory of supernovas, the formation of super massive black holes, charted dark matter and has changed forever our understanding of reality itself. 

Hubble was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24th, 1990. Initially when the telescope achieved first light it was immediately obvious that there was a serious problem with the optics and that the primary mirror had been ground to the wrong shape. The design of the Hubble Space telescope had always incorporated servicing missions, and astronomers immediately began to seek potential solutions to the problem that could be applied at the first servicing mission, scheduled for 1993.

This documentary also tells the story of the final daring and hazardous servicing mission by the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in May, 2009 to it fix Hubble before it spiralled to Earth to a blazing destructive re-entry.

The telescope is still operating as of 2015, and may last until 2020. Its scientific successor, the James WebbSpace Telescope (JWST), is scheduled for launch in 2018.

Hubble's Amazing Universe is available on DVD from Amazon.com and the National Geographic Channel’s online store.

Hubble's Amazing Universe (2011) 

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