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The Hubble Space Telescope Observatory

APR 01, 1990
The Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled to go into space this month, giving astronomers a ten‐times sharper view of the stars and galaxies and an unprecedented sighting of the uv universe.
C. R. O'Dell

No other astronomy project has taken so long to develop, proven so technologically challenging or cost so much as the Hubble Space Telescope. At a development cost of about $1.5 billion, the HST is big science by the standards of modern physics. Soon after the HST is launched on 12 April, the physics community will determine if the resources and professional efforts that have gone into the HST will produce the promised scientific returns that drew hundreds of the best scientists from the US and Europe into the project.

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References

  1. 1. See R. W. Smith, The Space Telescope, Cambridge U.P., New York (1989).

  2. 2. H. Oberth, Die Rakete zu den Planetraumen, R. Oldenbourg, Munich (1923), p. 85.

  3. 3. L. Spitzer Jr, Rand report, 1 September 1946, Douglas Aircraft Co, St. Louis.

  4. 4. Y. Kondo, ed., Exploring the Universe with the IUE Satellite, Reidel, Dordrecht, The Netherlands (1987).

  5. 5. D. S. Leckrone, Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac. 92, 5 (1980).https://doi.org/PASPAU

  6. 6. D. N. B. Hall, The Space Telescope Observatory, NASA CP‐2244, US Govt. Printing Office, Washington (1982).

More about the authors

C. R. O'Dell, Rice University.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 43, Number 4

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