The Hubble Space Telescope Observatory
No other astronomy project has taken so long to develop, proven so technologically challenging or cost so much as the Hubble Space Telescope. At a development cost of about $1.5 billion, the HST is big science by the standards of modern physics. Soon after the HST is launched on 12 April, the physics community will determine if the resources and professional efforts that have gone into the HST will produce the promised scientific returns that drew hundreds of the best scientists from the US and Europe into the project.