335-NASA Vision. Hope. Triumph.

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

During the STS-125 pre-launch press conference Heidi Hammel, a Senior Research Scientist from the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, expresses her views on the past, present, and future of the Hubble Space Telescope and its upcoming repair mission.

5 Things: Hubble Space Telescope

This giant cluster of about 3,000 stars, called Westerlund 2, resides in a raucous stellar breeding ground located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina. NASA

Center of Galaxy M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy. NASA

Sombrero Galaxy (M104). NASA

The Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years from Earth that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy. NASA