The Hubble space telescope: 'It's a terrific comeback story'

It's 25 years since a shuttle first put the giant space telescope into orbit, but the project initially seemed doomed to fail. How did Nasa's team turn things around, going on to capture over a million stunning images of deep space?

The moment had come. Scientists filed into the room and set up a screen for the gathered crowd to watch. On it was to appear the first ever image from Hubble, Nasa's powerful, sparkling space telescope. That, at least, was the plan. Plenty of the astronomers wanted this event - called, in the business, first light - to be held away from the media gaze. But the press had been invited and arrived in numbers. Together they waited. And then it arrived: the first picture of the heavens from the most impressive space telescope ever built, one that promised a revolution in our understanding of the universe.

It was May 1990 and the $1.5bn Hubble had been in orbit for a month. In the room at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, everyone stared at the image.

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