Hubble Telescope – Dale’s Daily Data

Conceived in the 1940’s, designed in the 1970’s, built in the 1980’s, it was in April of 1990 that the Hubble telescope was placed into orbit by the crew of the space shuttle Discovery.  A major problem during its design though was that the lenses were incorrectly calculated, so the first images were blurry.  A repair mission three years later basically outfitted Hubble with glasses.  It worked and since then Hubble has been sending back images of the universe ten times clearer than any telescope on earth ever delivered.  Hubble is about the size of a bus, it’s powered by the sun and orbits the earth once every 97 minutes.  Hubble has recorded a comet’s collision with Jupiter, provided a look at the surface of Pluto and shown views of distant galaxies that up until then scientists could only imagine.  It provides so much information that in just a week it would fill a collection of books two thirds of a mile long.  It’s named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble who research provided the basis for the big bang theory of earth’s creation.

SOURCE: hubblesite.org