Hubble Space Telescope Facts

16 Interesting Facts About the Hubble Space Telescope

1. The Hubble Space Telescope is 43.5 feet long and 14 feet wide.
2. It weighs more than 11,000 kilograms and costs around 1.5 billion dollars.
3. Hubble is nearly the size of a large school bus, but can easily fit into the cargo bay of a space shuttle.
4. The telescope was named after the great American astronomer Edwin Hubble. He was the scientist who discovered that the universe was expanding beyond our Milky Way.
5. The telescope was launched into space with the help of the space shuttle Discovery on 24th of April, 1990.
6. The Hubble Telescope runs on solar power which is provided by two 25-foot solar panels.
7. In its 20 years of service, Hubble has made more than 9,30,000 observations and clicked more than 5,70,000 images of 30,000 heavenly bodies.
8. Till date, Hubble has made more than 1,10,000 trips around our planet.
9. Astronomers using Hubble data have published more than 8,700 scientific papers.
10. Hubble finishes one complete rotation around the Earth in just 97 minutes with a speed of 28,000 km/h.
11. Hubble can observe the faraway galaxies, but it cannot observe the Sun and Mercury, which is too close to the Sun. The intense light from the Sun may damage it.
12. Hubble’s images of the wonders of the cosmos are recorded in shades of black and white, not colour. The final colour images are artificially made by the scientists through coloured filters.
13. The Hubble Space Telescope is designed in a fashion that it can even be repaired in space by astronauts. So far, it has been repaired four times.
14. The Hubble Space Telescope can be used by anyone to study the universe, irrespective of one’s nationality.
15. The Hubble Space Telescope is in the final phase of its life. Soon, its vital systems will shut down. It will then re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up sometime between 2019 and 2030.
16. The Hubble Space Telescope will be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope.

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