Why is the Hubble Space Telescope Important?
1 Answer
I would say because of the technical achievement in itself and for the fact that is allows the observation of celestial bodies without the interference of the Earth's atmosphere.
Explanation:
We can consider the incredible achievement of actually sending such complex piece of hardware in orbit (and operate it) as one of the most important successes in the field of engineering and automation. This testifies the high level of expertise and accuracy reached by humans in building very complex machines.
Another relevant achievement (in particularly for Astronomy) of the telescope is the possibly to show us distant objects without the interference (refraction and diffraction) of our atmosphere that changes density with height and distorts and blurs our observations (also reducing the Resolution of our observations).
[An example of the Hubble Space Telescope’s superior resolution compared with that of a standard ground-based telescope: (left) a distant, peculiar interacting galaxy imaged with the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea; (right) the same object imaged with Hubble. Subaru (8 m) telescope image courtesy of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; Hubble (2.4 m) image courtesy of STScI/NASA.]
