Some awesome photos
After the Hubble Space Telescope was repaird in 1993, the photos it sent back were nothing short of stunning. Humans had never seen the universe in that way before, and more scientific papers have been written from Hubble’s images than any other piece of scientific equipment in history.
There is a space shuttle mission happening right now (STS-125), in which the crew of Atlantis is making some modifications, upgrades, and repairs. These repairs are intended to allow the telescope to function until 2014, at which time Hubble will be decommissioned after more than 20 years in space.
This series of photos from The Big Picture is pretty amazing and features the astronauts and scenery from the mission. My personal favorite is #18 with the shuttle and telescope silhouetted by the sun.
