SPACE — When Galileo Galilei first pointed his telescope at the sky in 1610, he had difficulty seeing Saturn’s rings visible in the cheap telescopes of the time. Advances in optics ultimately improved scientists’ views of distant planets, stars, and galaxies.
However, Earth’s atmosphere still blocks or distorts most of the light for observers on the ground. As a solution, larger telescopes are placed on mountaintops, where the thinner atmosphere at higher altitudes allows for clearer images.
In 1946, after World War II, astronomer Lyman Spitzer proposed launching a space telescope, which could overcome the limitations of ground-based observatories.
However, it took several more decades before the idea gained enough support for the US National Academy of Sciences to organize a committee of scientists to evaluate the potential of the “Large Space Telescope” which ultimately gave rise to the Hubble telescope.
The National Academy of Sciences took this proposal to the American Space Agency (NASA). NASA is the only agency capable of making the Large Space Telescope a reality. NASA is already considering a space telescope of some type, but the agency is undecided about how big to make one and where to start.
In 1971, George Low, the agency’s interim administrator at the time, gave the Large Space Telescope Scientific Guidance Group the green light, and NASA immediately began lobbying Congress for funding for the venture.
Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has provided a series of stunning images of the universe. The Hubble Telescope has collected tens of terabytes of data over several decades.
The Hubble Telescope, provides key insights into the universe, from nearby objects such as the moon to the most distant galaxies, with observations of supernovae and nebulae in between.
The following are interesting facts about the Hubble telescope:
1. Hubble is 13.2 meters wide with a maximum diameter of 4.2 meters. On Earth, the telescope weighs 11,110 kilograms.
2. The solar-powered telescope was launched on April 24, 1990 on the space shuttle Discovery and deployed one day later.
3. Hubble orbits about 547 kilometers above Earth, on a trajectory tilted 28.5 degrees to the equator.
4. Hubble’s average speed is 27,000 kilometers per hour and it takes 95 minutes to complete one orbit.
5. Hubble transmits about 120 gigabytes of scientific data every week. That data is equivalent to about 1,097 meters of books on the shelves. Collections of images and data are stored on magneto-optical disks.
2024-02-14 08:48:00
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