Hubble's average used power is less than half the power generated by its solar arrays

Between 1993 and 2009, Hubble was serviced for repairs and upgrades 5 times

Across 21 space walks totaling 144 hours, replacement instruments, gyroscopes, solar arrays, batteries, and computer systems have helped extend the Hubble Space Telescope's operational lifetime beyond its planned 15 years.

Hubble overcame early optical failure and became a critical scientific instrument

The flaw in Hubble's mirror was smaller than the width of a human hair, but fixing it required a space mission as complex as a Hollywood rescue story—with astronauts installing corrective optics like contact lenses for a giant eye in the sky.

The Hubble Space Telescope uses curved mirrors to collect and focus light

Classified as a Cassegrain reflector, the observatory bounces incoming visible light and some infrared and ultraviolet light off a primary mirror with a diameter of 2.4 meters. The reflected light is directed to a secondary mirror, which reflects it through a tiny hole in the primary mirror and onto detectors.

Inside the James Webb's amazing sun shields

The Webb team has stationed its mammoth observatory in solar orbit—and brought its instruments below 40 kelvins (minus 233 ºC). Remarkably, most of the cooling has been done passively, by shielding the telescope from the sun and letting physics take care of the rest.

View galleries of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

With more than 1.7 million observations made since 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of space missions, planets, stellar nurseries, interstellar comets, star clusters, galaxies, and more. This search tool allows users to sort and filter across these celestial objects to explore over 35 years of Hubble's astrophotography.

The Hubble Space Telescope made discoveries within our solar system and across the universe

The observatory helped confirm the presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa, and uncovered seasonal variations on planets like Uranus. It also observed exoplanets and gravitational lensing, proved the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, and detected the accelerated expansion of the universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble

Using the Hooker Telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California in the 1920s, Hubble identified Cepheid variable stars in what was believed to be the Andromeda nebula. These stars can be used to determine distance in space, allowing Hubble to realize that Andromeda was a galaxy of its own.

Voyager science teams still collect valuable space data using four active tools

These instruments track magnetic fields, solar wind particles, radio emissions from the heliopause, and hydrogen levels in the outer heliosphere. Even though each Voyager sends data at just 160 bits per second, NASA receives 6–8 hours of tracking data daily.

The International Space Station is powered entirely by large solar arrays

Launched in 1998, its original solar panels were designed to withstand no more than 20 years of wear from temperature swings and micrometeoroid impacts in space. Replacement panels that roll out like carpets have since been installed.

Designs for the Hubble Space Telescope were based on Cold War spy satellites

By incorporating elements of the KH-11 KENNEN reconnaissance satellites, NASA could incorporate existing classified manufacturing expertise and infrastructure from the intelligence community to expedite the research project.

Solar sails use light as a means of propulsion

Photons possess momentum and can transfer it to objects they strike or bounce off, imparting radiative pressure, or a light-based force over a small surface area. Lasers fired at observational equipment with specially designed sails can theoretically use this mechanism to accelerate up to 20% the speed of light.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

A composite of telescope images of the sun, which each reveal unique solar features

While traditional cameras can reveal sunspots—cooler regions on the sun's surface—in visible light, x-ray detectors can highlight explosions of high-energy plasma and magnetic fields known as coronal mass ejections. Hydrogen-alpha filters can reveal clouds and filaments of material suspended in magnetic fields above the sun's surface.

Supermassive black holes create pressure waves, detectable as extremely low sounds

Space is largely silent because it lacks a medium for sound waves. Some Mars rovers capture sounds of wind, though the sounds are too low to hear. Through sonification, astronomical data can be translated into hearable sounds for broader engagement.

Explore a gallery of Bill Nye's energy-efficient home

The Southern California home is painted pale yellow and features double-pane, low-emissivity glass windows to help keep temperatures low. Solar panels are used for electricity and hot water, while Solatube domes and ducts illuminate rooms from above throughout the day, even when the sun is low in the sky.

How the sun heats the Earth

We all know it: Without the sun's heat, the Earth would be uninhabitable. So how does it work? The sun fuses roughly 600 million tons of hydrogen every second, the energy from which bursts out into space—including toward our planet. Our atmosphere...

Concentrated solar power systems focus sunlight in order to boil water

These systems use thousands of mirrors to reflect sunlight onto a central tower storing molten salt or multiple receivers housing heat transfer fluid that absorbs the radiation. The material is pumped through water to boil it, creating steam that drives a generator.

Creating 'Interstellar's' black hole blended visual effects with real physics models

Theoretical cosmologist Kip Thorne was consulted and collaborated with the film's visual effects team to develop new rendering software, integrate general relativity, and generate ultra-high-resolution visuals. The results were so accurate, they were published in scientific journals.

TON 618, the largest black hole ever detected, has the mass of 66 billion suns

The supermassive black hole is 18 billion light-years away and emits radiation with the brightness of 100 trillion stars. It is so massive that light would take an entire week to travel from its edge to its center.

SpaceX has launched thousands of its Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit

Every launched batch of satellites contains roughly 60 of the desk-sized gadgets. The batch is released at random into an initial orbit, and it takes time for them to naturally spread out enough before operators begin unfolding their antennae.

How helium turns the Large Hadron Collider into the world's largest cryogenic system

Across three stages, five "cryogenic islands," and weeks of cooling, 36,000 metric tons of magnets are successively brought down to temperatures colder than outer space using a closed liquid helium system. Helium continues to circulate during the collider's operation to maintain the magnets' temperature and the transmission of electrical current with zero resistance.

By 2028, data center power consumption may equal 22% of US households

Date from 2023 suggests that data centers accounted for around 4.4% of US electricity consumption, with new facilities supporting the AI boom consuming more power than the state of New Hampshire annually. However, the energy impact of individual use varies widely depending on the prompt and AI model. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Due to dark energy, the universe is expected to end as a dark, sparse place

While the sun is expected to continue shining for another five billion years, the expansion of the universe will cause nearby stars and galaxies to become ever more distant, until they are too far to observe. Once the last old, red, dim stars cool into darkness after trillions of years, the universe will settle into a state of eternal, dark emptiness.

NASA's budget makes up less than 0.4% of total US spending

NASA's annual budget consists mainly of human spaceflight activities (50%) and robotics and scientific research programs (30%). It peaked at almost $70B in 1964 but has been below $30B since 1995, coming from discretionary nondefense funds.

The H-bomb is hundreds of times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima

Unlike the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima, which relied on nuclear fission, the hydrogen bomb uses fusion to unleash vastly greater destructive power. Developed by both superpowers in the 1950s, it gave each the ability to destroy entire cities in seconds.

The Earth orbits the sun within the Orion Spur arm of the Milky Way galaxy

The solar system is roughly halfway between the galaxy's outer rim and its center, which is located about 25,000 light years away. The Milky Way is itself one of hundreds of thousands of galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Stars appear to twinkle because turbulence in the motion of molecules in Earth's atmosphere causes light to bend and wiggle rapidly on its way to the surface—a phenomenon called scintillation.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

How fusion—which releases energy when two lighter atoms combine to form a heavier atom—differs from fission

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.