Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble space telescope is a reflecting telescope that is based on the methodology of the very first reflecting telescope that was built back in the 1600s by the ingenious Isaac Newton. Like in this original telescope the light enters the telescope and strikes a concave primary mirror, which then in turn, acts like a lens to focus the light and deliver an image to the viewer. Consequently, the bigger the mirror, the better is the image that is reflected.

The Hubble space telescope is 13.3 meters or 43.5 feet long, which is the equivalent length of a large school bus. It weighs 11,110 kg or 24,500 pounds which is the equivalent of two full-grown elephants and it’s latest solar arrays cover 36 m2 or 384 square feet which is equal to the area of a highway billboard.

The Hubble space telescope moves around Earth at a speed of 5 miles per second. If cars moved that fast, a coast-to-coast trip across the continental United States would take only 10 minutes. It orbits at an altitude of 307 nautical miles (569 km, or 353 miles), inclined 28.5 degrees to the equator (low-Earth orbit)and because of its pace it only takes 97 minutes to complete one single orbit.

The Hubble space telescope transmits about 120 gigabytes of science data every week. It has done this since it captured its very first image back in 1990. These days it captures the equivalent of approximately 3,600 feet or 1,097 meters of books on a library shelf. The continually and fast growing collection of pictures and data is stored on magneto-optical disks. Through the Hubble’s data collection activity, the most frequently observed celestial object is Earth. Earth is observed regularly for calibration—to make sure that all the charge-coupled detectors are working properly. The images from these "test" observations show no detail that is of any use to scientists though.