April 24 marks the ‘double decade’ milestone for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope – the venerable telescopes that has been assiduously circling the Earth, clicking spectacular images of the universe; thereby discharging its duties in the extraterrestrial imaging arena.

The telescope was hauled aboard the Discovery space shuttle on April 24, 1990, and was deployed by the astronauts the next day. Though the telescope has repeatedly been facing the possibilities of failure, it has continued to enthrall the people over these last twenty years largely because of its apparently never-ending production of stupefying pictures of supernovae, nebulae and distant galaxies.

Noting that Hubble has “produced result after result after result,” Kevin Marvel, executive officer of the Washington, D. C.-based American Astronomical Society, said: “I don't think anybody thought Hubble would be around this long. It's sort of like the little engine that could.”

The mind-blowing images that have been captured by Hubble over the last two decades have essentially been gracing almost everything – ranging from textbooks to postage stamps to coffee cups. One of the latest Hubble-captured images that have been released NASA include the snapshots of the Carina Nebula, that particular region of our galaxy from where stars emerge.

The telescope, which has been repaired and refurbished by the astronauts at least five times till now; the telescope will, eventually, be de-orbited by NASA, sending it crashing down over the Pacific.