Hubble Space Telescope

As big an error as it was for imaging, the actual flaw was only about the thickness of a human hair.

The Hubble space telescope orbits the Earth at a speed of approximately 4.7 miles per second, or 282 miles per hour.

To view pictures taken by the Hubble Telescope you can go to Hubble Site, Space Latest Views, Space Telescope, NASA, Discovery Channel and National Geographic.

Virtually every modern imaging device used today, be it medical imaging, digital cameras, solid-state drives, Lithium-Ion batteries, and many other technological advancements owes its existence to technology created or further developed for HST. Life as we know it today would not be the same without the technology created for HST's experiments, operational systems, imaging systems, repair tools, materials/mechanical/electronics engineering, etc.

That's in addition to what we've also learned about our own planet, solar system, galaxy, the existence of other planets, etc. 6 billion is actually pocket change compared to budgets for other technological systems that give nowhere near the ROI that HST does.

The Hubble Telescope is a space telescope which is approximately 559 kilometers away from the surface of the earth in a "low earth orbit" which indicates that it is orbiting under 200 kilometers.

The Hubble Space Telescope was put into the orbit in 1990 and is still there up until today. It already had to be repaired five times and is expected to stay in the orbit until at least 2013.

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) gives us a much clearer view of the universe as it looked just after the Big Bang than any earth based telescope can. The HST orbits above the earth's atmosphere, which scatters light and blurrs details. With it, astronomers can see stars forming, which shows us how our own Solar System formed. While many people may not care about such things, it is important to know because one day the earth will be too small for it's human inhabitants. in order for us to survive as a specie, we will have to find another place to live. The universe is filled with inhabitable planets such as the earth. While it may seem far fetched to send humans out of the Solar System to a new home on another planet, it wasn't that long ago when space travel itself seemed impossible. As we develop new propulsion systems and a means to grow food and recycle water in space, long distance space travel will become as routine as a trip to the International Space Station is today.

The Hubble telescope is housed in an artificial satellite that is 13.2 m (43 ft) long, the primary mirror has a diameter of 2.4 m (7.9 ft) and has a collecting area of 4.5 m2 (48 sq ft).

More than 10,000 scientists built the Hubble Telescope. They were assigned to work on different parts of the Hubble Telescope.

it was made with metal and other materials!

Not rent per se, but civilians can request and be granted observation time, though it's very limited.

Most HST observation time is granted in advance to Astrophysics and Astronomy teams based on submitted proposals, as well as their association with countries that helped build and maintain HST. However, the Space Telescope Science Institute (the unit that controls HST and its observations here in Maryland at Johns Hopkins) Director has 10% of "Director's Discretionary (DD) allocation time" for HST observations. The Director on occasion does grant use to civilians, though they must go through the same submission procedure as any scientist would, and any submission must clearly justify use of HST. Using it to observe women on the beach in Maui is not considered justifiable use. Besides, that's what submarine periscopes are for.

You can read more about it at the link below.

The Hubble Space Telescope cost approximately $1.5 billion to build and launch, with additional costs for its maintenance and upgrades over the years. The telescope was launched in 1990, and its development spanned several years, beginning in the 1970s. Including operational costs, the total investment in Hubble is estimated to exceed $10 billion over its lifetime.

A refractor has no obstacles in the image path which can cause diffraction. reflectors have "spiders" (newtonians) and/or multiple optical elements which result in diffraction and lower respective image quality. both types have their advantages and disadvantages.

given any specific objective size, the refractor design is generally more expensive, and at a certain point (about 40"), refractors become infeasible due to the weight of the primary objective lens and the length of the tube. reflectors can, these days, be built to any dimension via multiple objective mirrors all controlled by computer to perfect alignment (well, within a reasonable degree of accuracy at least).

refractors are generally considered to be the instrument of choice for planetary viewing due to the pureness of the image path. reflectors are the instrument of choice for deep space and wide field viewing, due to the affordability of superior light gathering power of large mirrors vs smaller objective lenses for a given cost. a large folded reflector is far more portable than a large refractor, as well as more affordable.

so a determination of "which is better?" becomes dependent on what type of viewing you wish to do, how portable the system needs to be, and what your budget is.

Edwin Hubble

In Space

HST orbits the Earth about every 97 minutes, or about 14 times a day. Over a year's period, that comes out to just over 5400 orbits per year.

It depends on the position of HST in orbit and where the information is being relayed to/from, but in general only a few seconds at its furthest point. HST is in a low-earth orbit to avoid the Van Allen belt, so its orbit is only a few hundred nautical miles high.

No invasion of privacy. The telescope aims at the stars in space and not at objects on Earth.

Edwin Hubble received his bachelor's degree in 1910 from the University of Chicago. He initially studied physics and astronomy, laying the foundation for his future contributions to the field of cosmology.

HST runs on electricity supplied by massive Power Supply Units, which get their electricity from the 2 huge Solar Panels on either side of the spacecraft.

In the '20s Edwin Hubble discovered that the Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies and he showed that the galaxy is expanding.