Exploring the Universe: The Role of Space Telescopes

Unlike ground-based observatories, space telescopes observe the cosmos without atmospheric distortion or light pollution. This results in clearer, more detailed images and a better understanding of distant objects like stars, galaxies, and exoplanets.

Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized astronomy. It captured the Hubble Deep Field, showing some of the most distant galaxies ever seen, and helped to determine the rate of the universe's expansion.

Scheduled for 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope will observe the universe in infrared. It'll study every phase of cosmic history, from the first galaxies after the Big Bang to the atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory excels at viewing hot regions of the universe, such as exploded stars, clusters of galaxies, and matter around black holes. It has provided unparalleled X-ray images for over two decades.

The Kepler mission, operational from 2009 to 2018, discovered thousands of exoplanets by detecting the minute dimming of stars as planets passed in front. It vastly expanded our knowledge of potentially habitable worlds.

Space-based radio telescopes like the Spektr-R (RadioAstron) evade Earth's radio noise, observing the cosmos in radio waves with unprecedented clarity. They've provided insight into black hole activity and interstellar magnetic fields.

Future projects, like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, are set to survey the sky a thousand times faster than Hubble. Such telescopes will probe dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared cosmic backgrounds, unveiling new cosmic mysteries.

In 1993, astronauts fixed Hubble's flawed mirror during a spacewalk, saving the mission and transforming how we see the universe.