The Hubble Space Telescope has been capturing incredible images from space for over 26 years and it's going to keep doing it for five more years. After the retirement of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011, repair missions have ceased, so keeping Hubble in space until 2021 will be a huge achievement. The telescope's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope is scheduled for launch in 2018 and will be able to gaze even farther back in time to the birth of the first stars. On Thursday, the agency awarded a sole source contract extension to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy for continued Hubble science operations support at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, according to NASA. NASA is contractually extending science operations for the iconic telescope until 2021, despite its intended 15 year lifespan.

Source: Huffington Post June 27, 2016 15:00 UTC