Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope, the U.S. Postal Service, on April 10, issued five new commemorative postage stamps in a ceremony at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.

The five Hubble Space Telescope stamps. Photo: NASA

With NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, Goddard Director Al Diaz, members of the Maryland Congressional Delegation, and other dignitaries, Postmaster General William J. Henderson unveiled the stamps. They feature images of the Eagle Nebula, the Ring Nebula, the Lagoon Nebula, the Egg Nebula and Galaxy NGC 1316, all taken by Hubble over the past 10 years.

Launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990, during STS-31, Hubble's mission is to operate as a long-lived space-based observatory for the benefit of the international astronomical community. In its first decade of operation, discoveries made with the telescope have profoundly changed the science of astronomy while its images have amazed the public.

Hubble is a cooperative program of the European Space Agency and the NASA. It was conceived as a gleam in the collective eye of astronomers around the world in the 1940s. Designed and built in the 1970s and 1980s, the telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889 - 1953). Designed to be serviced on a regular schedule, and to protect the spacecraft against instrument and equipment failures, Hubble has special grapple fixtures and 76 handholds, all stabilized on three axes. Hubble has been serviced by the crews of three space shuttle missions, STS-61 in 1993, STS-82 in 1997, and STS-103 in 1999.

It is a 2.4-meter reflecting telescope and is in low-Earth orbit (approximately 370 miles).