I don't recall the launch as such, but in my memory, it was pretty popular throughout the 1990s. I don't have any first hand memories of the broken optics and t

I don't recall the launch as such, but in my memory, it was pretty popular throughout the 1990s. I don't have any first hand memories of the broken optics and the mission to put "glasses" on it, so I think it must have taken a while to become a household name, at least in Europe. Once the optics were corrected, though, it became very big. I once heard an astronomer say that there is pretty much no field in astronomy that did not benefit in some way from Hubble. And for lay people like me, lots of stunning pictures. :)