Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is an astronomical research institute located in Baltimore, Maryland. It operates the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope for NASA. STScI also serves as a science operations center for several other astrophysics missions.
The Space Telescope Science Institute was founded in 1981 as part of Johns Hopkins University. The current director is Dr. Kenneth Sembach. STScI has approximately 350 employees, most of whom are scientists and engineers involved in research or mission operations support.
STScI’s primary focus is on astronomical data analysis and interpretation, with particular emphasis on Ultra-Deep Field observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). In addition to HST data, STScI also supports data from other major telescopes such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope. As a result, STScI plays a key role in many of the major discoveries made by astronomers over the past few decades.
Some notable examples include:
– The discovery of dark energy, which led to the Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Adam Riess, and Brian Schmidt;
– The direct imaging of exoplanets;
– The characterization of star formation rates across cosmic time;
– And many more!