A Brief History of the Hubble Space Telescope

Brief history of the hubble space telescope NASA
NASA / Getty

A Cosmic Periscope
About the size of a large school bus, the Hubble orbits at a speed of five miles per second, 353 miles above Earth. At that velocity it can cross the United States in about 10 minutes and circle the globe in an hour and a half.

Get the Latest Photos from Time.com
Get TIME photos and pictures of the week delivered directly to your inbox.