14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, July 4, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reached an impressive milestone in its long-duration mission, when it logged its one millionth scientific observation. The observatory has been conducting studies from Earth's orbit for more than 21 years and 2 month.
Hubble launch on April 24, 1990, at around 8:33 am EDT (1233 GMT), aboard the space shuttle Discovery. The mission, dubbed STS-31, deployed the instrument on a near-circular low-Earth orbit (LEO), where the telescope has remained ever since.
The impressive milestone was reached as the observatory was conducting a search for water in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet located some 1,000 light-years away. The exoplanet, called HAT-P-7b (or Kepler 2b), is part of the hot Jupiter class.
Over the years, Hubble has made itself known for the amazing images it collected of various objects in the Universe. You would be hard pressed not to find at least one of its images in science manuals. Regardless, its one millionth observation was a spectroscopic measurement.
Spectrometry is a technique that allows for light to be broken down in its basic wavelengths. This helps astronomers reveal the chemical composition of cosmic sources located extremely far away from Earth.
“For 21 years Hubble has been the premier space science observatory, astounding us with deeply beautiful imagery and enabling ground-breaking science across a wide spectrum of astronomical disciplines,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says.
“The fact that Hubble met this milestone while studying a faraway planet is a remarkable reminder of its strength and legacy,” adds the official, who was the pilot of Discovery's STS-31 mission.
Hubble is now analyzing Kepler 2b in order to determine the composition of the planet's atmosphere. The hot Jupiter was first identified by the NASA Kepler Telescope, which was designed specifically to hunt for Earth-like exoplanets.
“We are looking for the spectral signature of water vapor. This is an extremely precise observation and it will take months of analysis before we have an answer,” scientist Drake Deming explains.
“Hubble demonstrated it is ideally suited for characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets, and we are excited to see what this latest targeted world will reveal,” the investigator goes on to say.
Deming holds joint appointments at the University of Maryland and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in Greenbelt, Maryland. He concludes by saying that Hubble has thus far collected and relayed back more than 50 terabytes of data.