The NASA Hubble Space Telescope, named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, is one of the most successful scientific projects of all time. Positioned outside the Earth's atmosphere it has significant advantages over ground-based telescopes — images are not blurred by the atmosphere, there is no background from light scattered by the air, and the Hubble can observe ultra-violet light that is normally absorbed by the ozone layer in observations made from Earth. Since its launch in 1990, it has become one of the most important instruments in the history of astronomy. With it, astronomers have made many observations leading to breakthroughs in astrophysics.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago by
alex
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"There is only so much fuel on board, and it will eventually be exhausted." I'm not a rocket scientist but I'm pretty sure more fuel can be delivered.
The main disadvantage of the Hubble is the cost of repairing - dollars and risk to human life. The other disadvantage is the limited lifetime. Hubble needs to use fuel to keep in orbit and to change orientation to point at a particular phenomenon of interest. There is only so much fuel on board, and it will eventually be exhausted. At that time, Hubble will cease to be a viable system.
anonymous wrote 9 months, 3 weeks ago | Reply