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As we age, so does the Hubble Telescope. The telescope, which NASA launched into space aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1990, is nearing the end of a long career, Post reporter...

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In 2014 astronomers, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope assembled a bigger and sharper photograph of the iconic Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation" (right); the original 1995 Hubble image is shown at left. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team [STScI/AURA]/P. Scowen Hester [ASU]) As we age, so does the Hubble Telescope. The telescope, which NASA launched into space aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1990, is nearing the end of a long career, Post reporter Sarah Kaplan wrote this week, crippled by a gyroscope failure. Hubble has made more than a million observations and, by 2014, generated 800 gigabytes of data every month. The telescope may be one of the most successful, and most influential, astronomical instruments humans created. Which makes choosing a favorite Hubble observation a bit tricky. Astronomer and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson, when asked this question in 2015, told the New York Times it was "like picking your favorite child." But, if push came to shove, I'd go with the Pillars of Creation, a gas formation 6,500 light-years away in the Eagle Nebula. The Pillars of Creation, which looks in Hubble images like the fingers of a titanic hand rising out of space, is a swirl of dust and molecular hydrogen gas. Each column is 6 trillion miles in length, where, at the densest points, new suns coalesce into being. Those swirls are the signposts of a star nursery. ADVERTISEMENT Hubble took the first image of the Pillars of Creation in 1995 and again in 2014. Of the images, Jennifer Wiseman, a Hubble scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, told Nature: "You see the columns of gas that signify a region where stars have recently formed and are still forming. We have a marvelous newer image with a newer camera, which gave us a visual clue as to how young stars that have recently formed are interacting with the dense gas remaining behind." — Ben The Hubble Space Telescope is hobbled after a mechanical failure Another of NASA's top space telescopes, Kepler, is almost out of fuel. By Sarah Kaplan  •  Read more »   Jagged ice spikes cover Jupiter's moon Europa, study suggests One of our solar system's most interesting moons might be studded with a kind of ice that forms only in rare locations on Earth. By Ben Guarino  •  Read more »   ADVERTISEMENT The Pentagon is studying an insect army to defend crops. Critics fear a bioweapon. "Insect Allies" exploits the latest in CRISPR gene editing to help imperiled crops, but critics fear such technology could evolve into a biological weapon. By Joel Achenbach  •  Read more »   Scientists think they've found the first moon outside our solar system The newfound "exomoon" is giant — about four times as big as Earth. By Sarah Kaplan  •  Read more »   Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to three scientists who harnessed 'the power of evolution' The scientists created and improved biological molecules with a wide variety of applications, including pharmaceuticals and cleaning supplies. By Ben Guarino  •  Read more »   Recommended for you     Get The Energy 202 newsletter PowerPost's daily guide to energy and environment policy, by reporter Dino Grandoni. Sign Up  »

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