Hubble Space Telescope marks 200,000th orbit around Earth

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on September 19, marking a new milestone for an observatory that has spent more than three decades reshaping scientific understanding of the universe.

Over its 36-year lifetime, Hubble has traveled more than 5 billion miles around Earth and completed more than 1.7 million total observations, according to NASA. The telescope marked the occasion with an observation aimed at a gravitationally lensed supernova, continuing its long-running work studying distant cosmic phenomena.

Decades of discovery

Launched in 1990, Hubble has become one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built, providing images and data that have contributed to major advances in astronomy, from measuring the rate of the universe's expansion to capturing detailed images of distant galaxies, nebulae and planetary systems.

The telescope's ability to observe gravitationally lensed objects, such as the supernova referenced in connection with this milestone, allows astronomers to study extremely distant or faint cosmic events that would otherwise be difficult to detect, by using the gravity of foreground galaxies to magnify light from background sources.

NASA did not provide additional details, in the material available, about the specific findings from the September 19 observation or how the data will be used in ongoing research.

Hubble continues to operate alongside newer observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope, with NASA maintaining both missions as complementary tools for studying the universe.