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NASA Missions

<< 3/12 < > Hubble Space Telescope (HST) being deployed during the STS 31 flight. For more than a decade, the Hubble Space Telescope has dazzled with stunning pictures of stars, galaxies and planets both in our solar system and beyond. The telescope orbits Earth at an altitude of 612 km (380 statute miles) at 28,000 kph (17,500 mph). At that speed, one orbit takes only 97 minutes. In order to take images of distant, faint objects, Hubble must be extremely steady and accurate. The telescope is able to lock onto a target without deviating more than 7/1000th of an arcsecond, or about the width of a human hair seen at a distance of 1 mile.

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