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The Hubble Space Telescope after its repair by crew members of the Shuttle Endeavour Photo credit: NASA

First conceived in the Forties, then designed and built in the Seventies and Eighties, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed into low Earth orbit on April 24, 1990, seven years behind schedule and almost $2 billion over budget. Unhampered by the haze of Earth's atmosphere, the giant tube-shaped Cyclops was designed to pierce the deepest corners of the universe. Expectations were high, but were dashed almost immediately when the Hubble's lens cover wouldn't open and NASA refused to provide explanation. Dogged by antenna problems and gyro stabilizer mishaps, Hubble returned its first pictures of space -- they were blurrier than a Bombay porno.

As details of NASA's mishandling of the project emerged, the public learned about drastic overpayments of contractors, lack of adequate testing and the worst blunder of all, a flawed primary mirror that fuzzed images, making the Hubble a decidedly unfunny, spacefaring Mr. Magoo.

Saturn's ultraviolet aurora, as captured by Hubble Photo credit: J.T. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)/NASA

Hubble was the star that failed, and the media wasted no time giving it the proverbial swirly. Hyped with the sort of fanfare that only a $2.5 billion price tag can command, Hubble was ripe for ripping, a floating, bloated argument for dismantling the U.S. space program in favor of soup kitchens and school bus programs. NASA reeled under the salvos.

Yet it was weirdly reassuring to know that the supposed best and brightest of the land had to endure the same travails that the common folk do – specifically, incompetence, inept management and corrupt contractors, according to a special investigative panel. It was more reassuring still when astronauts repaired Hubble manually, space-cowboy-mechanic style, reminding us that, for the time being at least, humans were not obsolete.

The Hubble Deep Field, a view to the edge of the visible universe Photo credit: Robert Williams and the Hubble Deep Field Team (STScI)/NASA

By allowing us to prove our worth as humans in a technology-dominated reality, Hubble once again enjoyed Most Favored Telescope Status and returned the favor with a wealth of astronomical advancement:

>> By its eighth year in orbit, it archived 4.44 terabytes of data, enough to fill 710 12-inch optical disks at 6.66 GB per disk, and allowed astronomers to publish more than 1700 scientific papers.

>> Observed what are believed to be the oldest galaxies in existence, infant spirals and ellipses ten billion years older than our own solar system, hence determining the age of the universe (around 15 billion years old).

>> Cataloged the entire life-cycle of stars, filling gaps in the Big Book of Astronomy with brilliant pictures of star collisions, births and sensational deaths.

An 800-light-year-wide disk of dust surrounds a black hole in galaxy NGC 4261 Photo credit: L. Ferrarese (Johns Hopkins University)/NASA

>> Vastly expanded our knowledge of black holes, proving them common enough that almost every large galaxy has one.

>> Captured the violence of leftover fragments from comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter, creating mushroom clouds of dust and an Earth-sized bull's-eye pattern on the giant planet.

>> Provided views of the oval light curtains (auroras) that gather at Jupiter's and Saturn's poles.

>> Showed that Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, is manufacturing ozone, meaning it may have a thin atmosphere of oxygen. Hubble has already produced evidence that Europa, another of Jupiter's moons, has an oxygen atmosphere.

Cat's Eye Nebula Photo credit: J.P. Harrington and K.J. Borkowski (University of Maryland)/NASA

>> Yielded the first views of the surface of Pluto, our solar system's outermost planet.

Most importantly, Hubble rekindled our curiosity about space by revealing its overwhelming beauty in ways we'd never seen before. The skin tingles watching new stars being formed from gassy clouds or nebulas floating in solitude. Seeing two galaxies collide somehow proves beyond a doubt that we and our universe are staggering miracles, and that is a precious gift. Happy birthday, Hubble.