Before Hubble the space wasn’t so beautiful. A black canvas shored up with bright white that while getting closer it fogged up. But Hubble revolutionised the way to observe the sky. It was the 24th of April of the 1990 when, thanks to a cooperation between NASA and ESA the new space telescope was launched, which was ready to shot pictures since there to the 2005. Or at least it had to be like this, becuase our dear and loyal telescope, doesn’t know that it has an expire date of 15 years and, so, it easily doubled its life expectation by arriving to blow out 30 candles.
But this isn’t all, because the NASA decided to celebrate the Hubble’s birthday in a special way. In 30 years the space telescope gives breathtaking space pictures, but would you like to know which one was shoted the day of your birthday?
30 years of Hubble
HST is our Hubble Space Telescope which is orbiting in the low terrestrial atmosphere for 30 years. It was launched thanks to the cooperation between the american space agency and the italian one, it was supposed to be in orbit for just 15 years but, till today, it is already 30 years that it gives us amazing pictures.
Hubble is not the only telescope and not even the first, but it is famous thanks to its incredible and meticulous job, that outperforms the other’s one. In the consecutive weeks after the launch was immediately clear that there was something wrong. The telescope, infact, had a problem on the first mirror. The problem was solved, in december 1993, with a service mission.
From that time it got just successes. The astronomers got the best pictures they could never had and the people passionated about astronomy were in ecstasies with these pictures.
The telescope is available to everyone, you have just to send a request and if it is accepted you can have the telescope for a predetermined period of time. Achieving a lot of goals and taking amazing pictures, almost continuosly, Hubble is celebrating 30 years.
The spatial pictures of your birthday
Hubble is been taking a look to the sky for 365 days per year, seven days a week, 24 hours per day, for 30 years, taking pictures towards the infinite. To honor the 30 years of the most famous telescope in the world the NASA decided to make a small birthday gift to anyone interested and that want to look at the sky. What was Hubble doing the day of our birthday? To find out it’s enough to go on the website of the NASA, in the page created for this meaning, and put the month and the day of birth. Here you have the spatial picture of our birthday.
To make it possible the NASA realized a system that allows to find a picture shoted right in that day. So we will all feel a little bit part of this amazing universe, our birthday written in the stars through the eyes of the telescope that changed the astronomy.
Together with the picture we will find the year when it was shoted, besides the month and the day inserted by us, and a description of it.
NASA at home
The spatial picture of your birthday is part of a larger project launched by the space agency, which is called NASA at home. The project allows everyone to access a big quantity of research about the universe.
It’s possible to download, for example, e-books with historical and scientifical documents about the NASA and astronomical explorations. There are virtual tours to which partecipate, some of them are even available in virtual reality. We can explore the research center of the NASA, the internal of the ISS and the surface of other planets.
We can discover the space exploration even during these days of quarantine by staying at home, with the project NASA at home. And, meanwhile, happy birthday Hubble.
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