A joint venture between the
European Space Agency and the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Hubble Space Telescope was first proposed in the 1940s, designed and constructed in the 1970s and 1980s, and was launched in 1990 by the crew of the space shuttle
Discovery.
The Hubble Space Telescope is in a low earth
orbit at an altitude of 595 km (370 mi) and circles the earth every 97 minutes. Since it is above the earth's atmosphere, HST has an
optical resolution that is ten times better than
ground-based telescopes.
The Hubble Space Telescope is also equipped with cameras and
spectrographs that provide information on the chemical composition, temperature and density of objects that are many
light years away.