The Hubble Space Telescope's image of the galaxy GN-z11, the farthest space object ever recorded. (NASA,ESA, P. Oesch (Yale University), G. Brammer (STScI), P. van Dokkum (Yale University), and G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz)

In the famed Hubble Space Telescope's nearly 26 years orbiting Earth, never has its exploration of the cosmos reached so far.

On March 3, scientists working with the instrument announced that they set a space-distance record for the farthest galaxy ever spotted — simultaneously pushing back in time to the earliest days of our universe. The newly recorded object is an infant galaxy, named GN-z11, which is seen just as it was 13.4 billion years ago, a mere 400 million years after the Big Bang, according to a press release.

"We've taken a major step back in time, beyond what we'd ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three percent of its current age," explained principal investigator Pascal Oesch of Yale University in a statement.

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By reaching into deep space, astronomers catch glimpses of worlds as they appeared billions of years ago, due to the speed at which light travels, in hopes of learning more about the creation of the universe.

Astronomers measure great distances in space using “redshift.” “This phenomenon is a result of the expansion of the universe; every distant object in the universe appears to be receding from us because its light is stretched to longer, redder wavelengths as it travels through expanding space to reach our telescopes. The greater the redshift, the farther the galaxy,” the Hubble news center explains.

In achieving this distance milestone, the scientists believe they have nearly reached the limits of what Hubble can see. When the James Webb Space Telescopelaunches in 2018, the instrument should take our understanding of the universe to new depths and distances.

"This new discovery shows that the Webb telescope will surely find many such young galaxies reaching back to when the first galaxies were forming," said investigator Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in a statement.

The paper on the finding will be published in next week’s issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

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April 24 marks the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope. To celebrate, NASA and the European Space Agency, which jointly run the telecope, released this image of the star cluster Westerlund 2. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/A. Nota/Westerlund 2 Science Team)