Overall length13.2 m
14.5Umbrellas
27.5Office chair heights
85.7 billionCarbon atoms
About the size of a large school bus
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Hubble Space Telescope
Humanity's eye on the cosmos since 1990/Spacecraft
Launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in April 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope orbits Earth every 95 minutes at roughly 540 km altitude. It has produced some of the most iconic images in astronomy, from the Pillars of Creation to the Hubble Deep Field. Despite an embarrassing mirror flaw at launch (fixed by a literal pair of corrective glasses in space), Hubble has been one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built.
Measurements
Mass at launch11,110 kg
4,894Bags of flour
757 millionthsBrooklyn Bridge masses
~24,500 lbs; serviced five times in orbit
Primary mirror diameter2.4 m
2.25Baseball bats
54.5Wine cork lengths
Polished to within 10 nanometers of a perfect curve
Orbital speed7,500 m/s
6.7 tenthsEarth escape velocities
5,000River currents
~27,000 km/h in low Earth orbit
Power generation2,800 W
1.87Treadmills
2.8 billionthsLightning strikes
280 millionPacemakers
Two 25-foot solar panels; about enough to run a hair dryer
Orbital altitude540,000 m
108,000Bamboo pole lengths
1.09Lake Michigan lengths
~540 km above Earth's surface
Maximum diameter4.2 m
1.9 tenthsSemi truck lengths
42Chicken wing lengths
At the widest point of the spacecraft body
Orbital period5,700 s
1.58Work meetings
100 billionthsGreat Wall constructions
1.7 octillionTime light crosses a proton
~95 minutes per orbit; about 15 orbits per day