Hubble

Hubble is a space telescope.

Voyager 2 produced images showing the Great Dark Spot, a storm on Neptune, as it approached the planet in 1989. By the time the Hubble Space Telescope photographed Neptune in 1994, the spot had disappeared.

A major breakthrough in our understanding of the universe took place in the 1920's thanks to American astronomer Edwin Hubble.

For centuries, astronomers believed that the Milky Way made up the entire universe. Hubble was among the first to show that the fuzzy patches in the sky seen through telescopes were other galaxies, not distant parts of the Milky Way.

The Hubble Space Telescope was named after Edwin Hubble, an astronomer whose contributions to astronomy include a classification system for galaxies and the Hubble Constant.

The Hubble Constant defines the relationship between a galaxy's distance from the Earth and the speed with which the galaxy is moving away from the Earth.

The Hubble Space Telescope was originally due to be launched in 1986, but the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger delayed the launch until April 24, 1990.

Once in orbit, a defect in the optical mirrors of the Hubble Space Telescope prevented the clarity that scientists had hoped for when viewing images provided by the telescope.

Data from Hubble are relayed to the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) that is in a geosynchronous orbit above Earth. This satellite relays the data to a terminal in White Sands, New Mexico.

Hubble has two solar panels which are each 2.3 meters by 11.9 meters in size. These panels convert sunlight directly into electricity.