The Hubble Space Telescope began its outer-space adventures in April 1990. Although the project had been in the works for 44 years, NASA only noticed a pretty significant problem once the telescope was actually launched. The state-of-the-art machine — designed to provide us with our first real glimpses of quasars and distant galaxies — was sending fuzzy pictures back to Earth. The Hubble telescope had a vision problem. Nearly four years and $700 million later, NASA finally repaired the telescope's incorrectly ground lens.