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From astronaut servicing 
missions to breathtaking images,  

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from science proposals to science 
papers, Hubble’s got the numbers!

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To begin with, this space superstar is 43 feet long

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and 14 feet wide. That’s about the size of 

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a big yellow school bus!

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Hubble weighs 27,000 pounds,

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heavier than two full-grown elephants.

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Now imagine this giant beast orbiting Earth

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about 300 miles up, zipping around at a

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jaw-dropping 17,000 miles per hour.

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That’s like traveling from New York to Los Angeles

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in less than 10 minutes!

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Every 95 minutes, Hubble 
completes

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a full orbit around the Earth,

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giving it a front-row seat to

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the wonders of the universe.

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In fact, since its launch in 1990, 

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Hubble has traveled over 5 billion miles,

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going around our planet over 190,000 times!

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Powering this cosmic giant are its 
solar arrays,

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generating over 5,000 watts of electricity.

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That’s used to power the hardware on Hubble and to  

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simultaneously recharge its batteries that are

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used when Hubble is in the shadow of the Earth. 

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Hubble’s hardware, which includes everything from

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computers to cameras, uses a total of 

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2100 watts of electricity.

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That’s enough to power 210 LED lightbulbs.

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Hubble’s optics feature a 7.8 foot

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primary mirror 
that is polished so smooth that if you stretched  

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it to be the width of the United States,

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you would never find a bump higher than 6 inches.

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Hubble has two 16-megapixel cameras,

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this allows Hubble to capture the universe in stunning detail,  

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taking us from our Moon 240,000 miles away,

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to objects in our solar system millions of miles away,  

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to galaxies hundreds of millions of light-years away,

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and even to some of the farthest galaxies

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around 13.4 billion light-years away!

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In fact, Hubble’s mirror collects light 40,000 times better  

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than the human eye!

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This system is so powerful 
that Hubble can

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spot a nightlight on the moon.

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To keep Hubble at peak performance,  

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astronauts visited five times to service 
the telescope.

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These missions included 

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essential upgrades and repairs that extended

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Hubble’s life and modernized its technology.

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From installing new cameras to replacing 
gyroscopes,

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each mission was a complex,  

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high-stakes endeavor.

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In total, 32 
astronauts have flown to Hubble,

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and with 5 servicing missions combined with

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171 hours of spacewalks. these brave men

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and women went above and beyond to ensure

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our window to the universe remains crystal clear.

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Hubble has over 1.6 million 
observations that resulted in

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more than 22,000 peer-reviewed

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scientific papers published in professional journals  

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on its discoveries.

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Those papers have been cited in other papers

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over 1.3 million times.

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That’s a lot of cosmic 
knowledge all because

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of one space telescope!

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Hubble’s groundbreaking discoveries 
revolutionized

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our understanding of the universe.

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From measuring the rate 
of its expansion,

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to finding evidence of black holes,

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and even peering into the 
atmospheres of

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planets around other stars.

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Even with so many observations over three decades,

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Hubble has still only observed around

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1/10th of 1% of the entire sky!

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That means Hubble has a lot more

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of the universe to explore!

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So the next time you gaze up at the night sky,

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remember that Hubble is out there, 

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unveiling the secrets of the cosmos.

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Over its more than three decades in orbit,

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we really have learned a lot

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about our place in the universe…

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Thanks to one incredible telescope!

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Follow us on social media @NASAHubble