NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has now circled Earth 200,000 times, marking another extraordinary milestone for an observatory that was designed to operate for just 15 years.
The Hubble Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit on Sept. 19, more than 36 years after it launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in April 1990. During that time, the telescope has traveled more than 5 billion miles (8 billion kilometers) around Earth and made more than 1.7 million observations of the universe.
This most recent milestone came while Hubble was working on a cosmic mystery tied to one of its most important scientific legacies: measuring the expansion of the universe, according to a statement from NASA.
Hubble is repeatedly observing the galaxy cluster MACS J0417 in an effort to catch the reappearance of a distant stellar explosion, or supernova, called Athena. The enormous cluster acts as a gravitational lens, bending and magnifying light from objects behind it. Because that light can travel along different paths around the cluster, the same supernova can appear multiple times in Hubble's view, potentially separated by months or even years. Tracking those appearances could help astronomers map the cluster's mass and refine measurements of the universe's expansion rate.
The recent observations of MACS J0417 are just the latest chapter in Hubble's remarkable journey. Travelling roughly 300 miles (483 kilometers) above Earth's surface at about 17,000 mph (27,000 kph), Hubble circles the planet roughly 15 times per day, which is about one lap every 95 minutes.
Its low-Earth orbit is also what gives Hubble its remarkable view of the cosmos. By operating above most of Earth's atmosphere, the telescope avoids the atmospheric distortion that blurs observations from the ground and can observe wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light that are difficult or impossible to study from Earth.
The 200,000-orbit milestone follows a string of achievements that demonstrate just how long Hubble has remained scientifically productive. In 2008, it completed its 100,000th orbit and in 2011, it made its millionth science observation. More recently, Hubble adapted to operating with just one working gyroscope in 2024, captured an enormous 2.5-billion-pixel mosaic of the Andromeda Galaxy in 2025 and celebrated 35 years in orbit.
Yet Hubble is no longer a telescope that can simply be repaired whenever something breaks. Its final astronaut servicing mission took place in 2009, and no additional servicing missions are currently planned. NASA says the observatory is expected to remain scientifically productive into the next decade, while atmospheric drag slowly lowers its orbit. Hubble is not expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere until the mid-2030s at the earliest, with NASA planning for a future controlled disposal of the aging observatory.
For now, Hubble is still circling Earth, continuing to turn those seemingly ordinary trips around our planet into extraordinary views of the universe.
