NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has zoomed around planet Earth for the 200,000th time, a huge milestone reached on 19 September 2026.
Hubble orbits about 480 kilometres above Earth, travelling at an incredible speed of around 17,000 miles an hour, which is more than 27,000km/h. It completes one full loop around the planet roughly every 95 minutes, meaning it makes about 15 orbits every single day.
To mark the milestone, Hubble was busy studying a distant galaxy cluster called MACS J0417. It was watching a special kind of exploding star, nicknamed “Athena”, whose light is bent and magnified by gravity on its way to Earth. Scientists hope this will help them understand how fast the universe is expanding.
Hubble first launched into space in April 1990, carried up by the Space Shuttle Discovery. It was only designed to last 15 years, but more than 36 years later, it is still hard at work.
Over its lifetime, Hubble has made about 1.7 million observations and travelled roughly 5 billion miles through space.
Experts don’t expect Hubble to fall back through Earth’s atmosphere until at least the mid-2030s, meaning this remarkable telescope should keep sending back amazing pictures of space for a good while yet.
SMART Prep | Quick Question 
