![December 2009 Hubble](https://www.astronomy.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/02/december-2009-hubble.jpg)
The Hubble Space Telescope looked clean and spiffy on April 25, 1990, when astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery nudged the space observatory into orbit.
NASA/Smithsonian Institution/Lockheed Corporation
No. NASA’s space shuttle fleet is scheduled to go out of service in 2010. And after that, neither the United States nor any other nation will have a space vehicle capable of returning such a large piece of equipment to Earth.