Hubble Space Telescope Trivia Questions with Answers
What was the launch date of the Hubble Space Telescope?
A: April 24, 1990.
What was the launch site for the
Hubble Telescope?
A: Kennedy Space Center LC-39, Florida, U.S.
What type of vehicle was used to launch Hubble?
A: Space Shuttle Discovery.
What is the mass of the Hubble Space Telescope?
A: 24,490 at launch.
How long is the Hubble Telescope?
A: 43 ft.
What type of orbit is the telescope in?
A: Near-circular low Earth orbit.
What is the height of Hubble's orbit?
A: 347 miles.
What is Hubble's orbit period?
A: 96–97 minutes.
What is Hubble's orbit velocity?
A: 25,000 feet per second.
What is the diameter of the Hubble Telescope?
A: 7.9 feet.
What is the size of the collecting area of the telescope?
A: 48 square feet.
What is Hubble's focal length?
A: 189 feet.
Hubble's four main instruments observe in what spectra?
A: The near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra.
Who is the Hubble telescope is named after?
A: The astronomer Edwin Hubble.
Hubble's orbit is outside the distortion of Earth's what?
A: Atmosphere.
Being outside the atmosphere allows it to take what kind of
images?
A: Extremely high-resolution images with almost no background light.
Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in what
field?
A: Astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the
universe.
Who built Hubble?
A: The United States space agency NASA, with contributions from the European
Space Agency.
Who operates the Hubble Space Telescope?
A: The Space Telescope
Science Institute.
The HST is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Hubble is the only space telescope to be designed to be
what?
A: Serviced in space by astronauts.
How many times have Space Shuttle missions repaired,
upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope?
A: Five.
Hubble's scientific successor, the James Webb Space
Telescope (JWST), is scheduled for launch in what year?
A: 2018.
