Top Space Telescopes and Scientific Breakthroughs

The Roman Space Telescope joins a lineage of influential space observatories that have profoundly advanced our understanding of the cosmos.

The top 3

Three Most Influential Space Telescopes: The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, revolutionized astronomy with detailed images and contributed to understanding the universe's large-scale structure and stellar evolution. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in 2021, is the largest segmented mirror telescope in space at 6.5 meters across and observes in infrared, designed to see farther into the universe. The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), launched in 1989, mapped infrared and microwave background radiation, providing crucial clues about the universe's earliest history.
Roman Space Telescope's Key Scientific Goals: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aims to investigate dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets by conducting large surveys of the sky. Its Wide Field Instrument will image an area 100 times larger than Hubble's cameras, allowing it to detect rare objects and map billions of cosmic objects.
Largest Space Telescope Mirrors Ever Built: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) holds the record for the largest segmented mirror in space, measuring over 6.5 meters across. The Herschel Space Telescope had the largest unsegmented mirror at 3.5 meters. On Earth, the Giant Magellan Telescope will have a 25.4-meter wide light-collecting surface made from seven 8.4-meter mirrors.