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About Us

 

About the Institutional Archive

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) established the Institutional Archive in 2018 to capture key administrative, scientific, and technical documentation of enduring value for the purpose of preserving institutional knowledge, and providing inspiration to present and future generations through research and education. The STScI archive contains records, papers, photographs, institute publications, and other historical materials documenting the intellectual, cultural, administrative, and social life of STScI from conceptualization (1972) to the present. It also includes the milestones of its missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The Institutional Archive is primarily a resource to institute staff and other researchers, with a limited set of materials available to the public. The collection will continue to grow for staff and the public as materials are donated, processed and added to this Digital Archive.

 

Additional Public Resources

If you are looking for iconic images from the Hubble Space Telescope or James Webb Space Telescope, we encourage you to visit the dedicated webpages maintained by the STScI Office of Public Outreach and NASA. The Institutional Archive is the ideal resource for historical information not maintained on STScI's main web site or for information about physical archival items about the history of the institute and its missions.
HST Images: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/
JWST Images: https://webbtelescope.org
Additional public-facing information from STScI can be found on our main website, https://www.stsci.edu, including the following:

Our Partnership with Johns Hopkins University

JHU Special Collections located at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus in Baltimore, Maryland, houses a collection of documents relating to the history of the institute. Space Telescope Science Institute records are available upon request. Please note that most materials are housed off site and access to archival material owned by STScI requires approval from the institute. For access to STScI records housed at the JHU Archives, please contact us at Institute_archive@stsci.edu.

 

The Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) 

The Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes is an astronomical data archive focused on the optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared. MAST hosts data from over a dozen missions like Webb, Hubble, TESS, Kepler, and in the future Roman.

MAST provides:

  • World-wide technical and scientific leadership in archive system design
  • Secure storage and reliable retrieval services for data from HST and all MAST-supported missions
  • User-friendly and scientifically useful search and cross-correlation tools
  • Development and support for inter-archive communication and data transfer standards
  • Accurate and useful mission archive documentation
  • Free public access to all our data products after any proprietary constraints are lifted

 

Please visit MAST Home to learn more about the data archive which is operated separately from the Institutional Archive.