SPACE TELESCOPES ORBIT THE EARTH hundreds of miles above the ground, their instruments collecting light from stars and galaxies. Telescopes in space have a clearer view than those on Earth, because they are unaffected by the Earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs or distorts much of this radiation. There are a variety of types of space telescope designed to observe different types of light.
The Hubble Space Telescope observes infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light. It can detect objects that are 100 times fainter than those any telescopes on Earth can see. When this 12-ton (11,000-kilogram), 43-foot (13-meter) long telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle in 1990, it was found that its primary mirror was faulty and its images were blurred. Astronauts fitted extra optics to correct the problem in 1993.
