Hubble telescope is 30 years old. How long can you work?

At this moment, there is an astronomical telescope that has been working continuously for 30 years in low-earth orbit at a height of 559 kilometers. It weighs 1 1 ton, has an orbital speed of 7.5 km/s, and can orbit the earth once in 96 minutes. It was named after Edwin Hubble, the father of galactic astronomy.

Astronomical observation beyond the earth? It has always been the dream of astronomers, because compared with ground-based observatories, telescopes operating in space can ignore the disturbance of the earth's atmosphere, and can also observe infrared rays and ultraviolet rays that were originally absorbed by the atmosphere.

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In space, it is assumed that the observation ability and upper limit of astronomical telescope will crush all observatories on the ground.

In this way, with the support of NASA and the lobbying of all astronomers, the Hubble telescope was formally established and started production. It was scheduled to be launched in June of 1986 and June of 10, but unfortunately, something unexpected happened.

1986 65438+1On October 28th, during the tenth launch mission, the space shuttle Challenger exploded violently 73 seconds after liftoff, and seven astronauts survived.

The failure of Challenger cast a heavy shadow on NASA, and the launch of Hubble telescope, which was originally scheduled to be launched in June 5438+the same year 10, was delayed because of this failure.

But no one expected that it would take four years.

1On April 24th, 990, the Hubble telescope, which had been waiting in the clean room for four years, was assembled and carried by the space shuttle Discovery, and successfully put into the scheduled orbit.

According to astronomers, Hubble telescope should be put into astronomical observation immediately after it is put into orbit to make up for it? Lost time? But astronomers never imagined that fate played a joke on them as it did four years ago.

The reason for this is that although the first set of photos sent back by Hubble telescope has been greatly improved compared with the ground observatory, the image quality is far lower than originally expected. Worst of all, the flatness of the edge of Hubble's main mirror is 2.2 mm worse than the required flatness, which means that when Hubble shoots deep space objects and other galaxies, the light will diffuse, resulting in the final image blurring.

After the above mistakes and faults were made public, Hubble telescope immediately became the target of many jokes, and people ridiculed it as useless. In order to save face and spend more than $2 billion, NASA designed an optical path correction device to correct the light scattered by errors before the first maintenance task of Hubble telescope began.

1993 65438+in February, two astronauts, who are the maintenance personnel of Hubble telescope, wore extravehicular spacesuits, including? Corrective device? Several instruments, including Hubble, were completely cured in theory. Trouble?

1994 65438+1October 13, Hubble telescope, which recovered its sight, sent back another set of photos. This time, Hubble's powerful ability to capture deep space objects has been fully exerted, allowing the human world to see clear extragalactic galaxies for the first time. From this moment on, the troubled Hubble telescope officially became a powerful tool for astronomers to observe the universe.

On April 25th, 2020, Hubble will officially celebrate its 30th birthday. However, with the rapid development of astronomy in the past 30 years, there will be less and less things that Hubble can do in the future. After all, it's just an optical telescope.

Outside the visible light band, Hubble will never see the vast electromagnetic world, so the Hubble telescope has great limitations at present, which means that it will eventually be eliminated.

According to the plan, the Hubble telescope will be officially retired from 2030 to 2040, when it will become a meteor and fall into the South Pacific, or there will be other arrangements, which is still unknown.

But in any case, human beings are grateful that Hubble telescope has opened the horizon of the universe.