Space telescopes, operational and in development

NASA, ESA, CSA · Infrared

The largest and most powerful space telescope ever built, observing the universe primarily in infrared to see through dust clouds and detect the faint light of the earliest galaxies.

NASA, ESA · Optical/UV/Infrared

One of the most productive scientific instruments ever built, and the observatory that first showed the public what deep space actually looks like — the Hubble Deep Field, pillar-of-creation nebula images, and precision measurements that helped establish the universe's expansion rate.

ESA · Optical/UV/Infrared

ESA's dark-universe survey telescope, mapping the shapes and distribution of billions of galaxies across a third of the sky to trace how dark matter and dark energy have shaped cosmic structure over time.

NASA · X-ray

NASA's flagship X-ray observatory, built to image extremely hot, high-energy regions of the universe: supernova remnants, matter falling into black holes, and colliding galaxy clusters.

NASA · Optical

NASA's exoplanet-hunting survey satellite, watching for the tiny brightness dips caused by planets crossing in front of their host stars across nearly the entire sky.

NASA · Infrared

A wide-field infrared survey telescope built around Hubble-class optics but with a field of view roughly 100 times larger, designed to survey dark energy, dark matter and exoplanets at a scale no prior telescope could attempt.

NASA · Infrared

The last of NASA's four Great Observatories, an infrared telescope that studied everything from asteroids and exoplanet atmospheres to the structure of the Milky Way, before being decommissioned in 2020.

NASA · Optical

The mission that turned exoplanet detection from a handful of discoveries into a statistical science, confirming thousands of planets and reshaping estimates of how common planets are across the galaxy.