大象传媒

For over 30 years the Hubble Space Telescope has been taking incredible pictures of deep space, opening our eyes to new wonders of the Universe.

Now a small piece of it is being displayed at Leicester's 'National Space Centre'.

Hubble was launched on 25 April 1990, hitching a ride with the Space Shuttle Discovery, and has been continuously observing the night sky ever since.

From its position in low-Earth orbit, floating some 547km (340 miles) above Earth, the Hubble telescope can see things in the Universe that we could previously only dream of. Much has been learned over the lifetime of Hubble鈥檚 mission, from the causes of gamma-ray bursts to how planetary collisions work, the expansion of the Universe and hidden dark matter. To this day, it still inspires us with its breath-taking images.

The telescope was named after the visionary US astronomer Edwin Hubble, whose observations in the 1920s pointed to our expanding Universe being filled with distant galaxies.

Hubble is powered by solar energy, collected by two wing-like solar arrays - and it's part of one of these solar cell panels taken from Hubble during its final servicing mission in 2009 that's on display this summer at the National Space Centre's 'Inter Space Gallery.

Dhara Patel from the Space Centre's team tells Ben Jackson all about it.

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