The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) was installed in the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during Servicing Mission 3B, launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-109) 1 March 2002 6:22 AM EST. The ACS increases the discovery efficiency of the HST by a factor of ten. It consists of three electronic cameras and a complement of filters and dispersers that detect light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared (1200 - 10,000 angstroms).

The ACS science and engineering team is concentrated at the Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute, but includes scientists from major universities in the United States and Europe. The ACS Principal Investigator and leader of the science team is Holland Ford, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute.