NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth, marking another milestone in a mission that has far exceeded its original 15-year design life.

Hubble completed the orbit on Sept. 19, more than 36 years after its launch aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in April 1990. Since then, it has traveled more than 5 billion miles (8 billion kilometers) around Earth and made more than 1.7 million observations of the universe.

Orbiting about 483 kilometers above Earth at speeds of up to 27,000 kilometers per hour, Hubble completes nearly 15 orbits each day, or one roughly every 95 minutes.

The milestone comes as Hubble continues studying fundamental questions about the universe, including the rate of cosmic expansion. Its achievements include reaching 100,000 orbits in 2008 and recording its millionth scientific observation in 2011. In 2024, it continued operating with a single gyroscope, and in 2025 it produced a 2.5-billion-pixel mosaic of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Following its final astronaut servicing mission in 2009, Hubble can no longer receive the periodic repairs that extended its mission in the past. NASA expects the telescope to continue producing scientific data into the next decade, despite gradual orbital decay caused by atmospheric drag. It is not expected to re-enter the atmosphere before the mid-2030s at the earliest, with NASA planning a controlled de-orbiting operation in the future.