The telescope was named after the astronomer Edwin Hubble. It was manufactured by NASA, with contributions from the European Space Agency, and it is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute located in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hubble Space Telescope Started Out Hurting, But Now is Going Strong
Shortly after the Hubble Space Telescope was launched on its mission to travel into orbit, it was found that its photos were blurred and unusable. It turned out that the mirror was ground incorrectly, causing the expensive telescope to be rendered useless. Thankfully, astronauts from the space shuttle were able to fix it in 1993, and it has been going strong ever since. It sends out out HD quality photos that have helped science make several enormous breakthroughs, including better understanding what went into the expansion of the universe and the Big Bang theory.
Hubble Space Telescope Mission in Space
This space telescope goes about its daily travel around the Earth, sitting 340 miles or 547 kilometers above the planet, doing its job of photographing all kinds of celestial events from new stars to gas clouds or new exoplanets–whatever it is aimed at. The telescope has a special mirror that is nearly eight feet in length, and has the ability to see things in ultraviolet light, visible light, and in the near infrared spectra.
Hubble Space Telescope Sees Where No Man Has Gone Before
Since the 1993 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, there have been five other times astronauts traveled into space to repair, upgrade and replace some of the systems on it. It is expected that the Hubble should be able to last until its successor is launched, which is due to happen in 2018, when the James Webb Space Telescope is set to travel into orbit. A lot of Hubble’s best accomplishments have been in areas of science that researchers didn’t even know existed when it was sent into space. For instance, one of the things that the Hubble Space Telescope has helped astronomers to learn about is the phenomenon called dark energy, which is thought to exist throughout the universe and be part of what is causing its expansion. Hubble has also helped astronomers to see new planets beyond our own solar system and to do scans of those planet’s atmospheres. In order to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope and its 25th anniversary, NASA has decided to have it take a photo of a stellar nursery, which is around 20,000-light years away from the Earth located in the constellation Carina.
A visual postcard of the Rockaways may not be the kind of visual postcard the Hubble Space Telescope has been giving us, but the idea of a visual postcard is as fresh as ever:
https://youtu.be/Y4fGsVUEdVU
