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The Hubble telescope

The Hubble telescope, named after the astronomer Edwin P Hubble, turns twenty this week . In its time orbiting the Earth, an act which it carries out every 96 minutes at a speed of 5 Miles per second, Hubble has seen more than 30,000 objects and has revealed the universe to be between 3 and 14 billion years old. It has also discovered "Dark energy" which is a mysterious force that causes the expansion of the Universe to speed up.

Although Hubble is expected to continue working until at least 2013 its replacement, named the James Webb Space Telescope, is penciled in for launch in 2014. Once Hubble degrades to the point where it stops functioning it will crash back to Earth.

Having lasted more than two decades, Hubble is one of Nasa's more successful missions although it has had a few problems along the way including a key mirror failure and several shuttle tragedies.

"Hubble has gotten people interested in space and science related to the universe who never had any interest in this kind of science before. Hubble images have become a part of our culture," enthused astrophysicist Mario Livio who is from Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Hubble's science and operations center.

The data produced by Hubble has enabled more than 6,000 scientific articles to be published, and a fair few goa trance album covers! To discover more about Hubble and the impact it has had on Astronomy complete with some stunning images, visit Nasa's official Hubble site at hubblesite.org.