Hassium was first produced by Peter Armbruster, Gottfried Münzenber and their team working at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany in 1984. They bombarded atoms of lead-208 with ions of iron-58 with a device known as a linear accelerator. This produced atoms of hassium-265, an isotope with a half-life of about 2 milliseconds (0.002 seconds), and a free neutron.

Hassium's most stable isotope, hassium-277, has a half-life of about 12 minutes. It decays into seaborgium-273 through alpha decay or decays through spontaneous fission.

Since only small amounts of hassium have ever been produced, it currently has no uses outside of basic scientific research.