Since its genesis in 1958, NASA has really speckled our corner of the cosmos with incredible feats of engineering. To this day, remnants of the historic Apollo lunar missions exist on the moon; the OSIRIS-REx probe recently placed its robotic fingerprint on a clumpy asteroid called Bennu; multiple rovers have left tracks on Mars over the years with their specially designed wheels; and the twin Voyager craft are still exploring interstellar space almost 50 years after setting off from our planet.
It is unsurprising, however, that even with this repertoire of space explorers, one of the agency's most beloved spacecraft sits pretty close to home: The Hubble Space Telescope. Having launched in 1990 — and even been tended to several times by astronauts in space — Hubble sits right in Earth's orbit and is responsible for some of the most visceral, data-rich and astronomically spectacular views of the cosmos we have. It has produced reminder after reminder that we live in an enchanting universe.
