Baltimore is home to the Space Telescope Science Institute, Hubble’s science operations center.
STScI is located on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus in Baltimore, Maryland. The institute was established in 1981 and is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. For Hubble, it supports the scientific side of the mission: selecting targets, scheduling observations, processing data, calibrating instruments, and serving the astronomy community.
Baltimore is sometimes confused with Greenbelt, Maryland, because NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt handles Hubble’s flight operations and spacecraft control. These are closely coordinated but distinct responsibilities. Houston is associated with NASA’s human-spaceflight activities, while Pasadena is strongly associated with Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
STScI’s role has expanded beyond Hubble. It also supports science operations for the James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and it manages the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.