Hubble Space Telescope very narrow field—Lucky Cam, for example, produces crisp images just 10" to 20" wide, whereas Hubble's cameras produce crisp images across a 2½' (150") field. Furthermore, space telescopes can study the universe across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, most of which is blocked by Earth's atmosphere. Finally, the background sky is darker in space than on the ground, because air absorbs solar energy during the day and then releases it at night, producing a faint—but nevertheless discernible—airglow that washes out low-contrast astronomical objects. Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth
Spitzer Space Telescope observe the stars at noon. Previous space observatories (such as IRAS, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, and ISO, the Infrared Space Observatory) were launched during the 1980s and 1990s and great advances in astronomical technology have been made since then. Most of the early concepts envisioned repeated flights aboard the NASA Space Shuttle. This approach was developed in an era when the Shuttle program was expected to support weekly flights of up to 30 days duration. A May 1983 NASA proposal described SIRTF as a Shuttle-attached mission, with an evolving scientific instrument payload. Several flights were anticipated with a probable transition