Hubble Space Telescope

Have you ever wondered what a star looks like up close? Or, far away galaxies? Well, you can see it all with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Did you know that the Hubble Space Telescope (H.S.T.) was named after American astronomer, Edwin Hubble? Edwin Powell Hubble was born on November 20th, 1889, in Marshfield Missouri. Today Edwin Hubble is remembered as the man who searched “for the boundaries of the universe.”

The H.S.T. cost an estimated $1.5 billion to build and put into orbit. It also had to be repaired because the eight-foot primary mirror had been polished incorrectly. One edge of the mirror was ten-thousandths of an inch too flat (invisible to the human eye).

The H.S.T. was deployed April 25th, 1990 from the space shuttle Discovery. (The space shuttle that exploded in the sky on February 1st, 2003.) It will orbit three hundred seventy miles above Earth. It will also be the first to see the universe in visible light outside the atmosphere.

The H.S.T. takes pictures of objects fifty times fainter than objects on Earth. It can look at 350 times the volume of space seen by Earth telescopes. It can also see galaxies billions of light years away, so it sees them as they were billions of years ago.

The H.S.T. is about the size of a school bus, which is 43 feet long and 14 feet in diameter.

The H.S.T. was intended to last for fifteen years, but it has now lasted for twenty.

The H.S.T. is in space because it can see the universe more clearly than we can on Earth.

The year 2010 may be a sad day for Hubble. It will be launched into higher orbit, or brought back to Earth. The Hubble will always be remembered death or not.

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