The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is named after Edwin Powell Hubble, an American astronomer who is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of the 20th century. Hubble's most famous contribution to astronomy was his discovery that the universe is expanding, which he made in the 1920s by observing the redshift of galaxies. He also developed the Hubble classification scheme for galaxies, which is still used today to categorize the different types of galaxies.

The HST was launched in 1990 and has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has provided us with stunning images of space, including the first-ever pictures of black holes. The HST has also allowed astronomers to study the most distant objects in the universe, such as quasars and galaxies that are billions of years old.