The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is the most famous telescope in the world. It takes pictures, and these pictures help scientists learn about space. The telescope was launched in 1990. The HST circles Earth and orbits at about 362 miles above the planet. It is a large telescope and weighs 12 ¼ tons. The HST has a 2.4 meter primary mirror. The primary mirror collects the light that the telescope photographs. It also has five scientific tools. These tools help scientists to study space. The tools use different kinds of light to gather images of space. First, light is reflected on the primary mirror. The primary mirror reflects the light onto a smaller mirror called the secondary mirror. The smaller mirror sends the images to scientific tools such as cameras. The scientific tools send the images to another satellite. The satellite then sends the images back to Earth. Scientists view the images on computers.
The HST circles Earth one time every 96 minutes. It takes pictures of space continually as it orbits. The HST has sent back a great amount of information to Earth
and has made over one million observations. It has also
sent back more than 570,000 images to Earth. It has helped
scientists learn about space.
The HST is powered by two large solar panels. The telescope has sensory boards. These boards lock onto guide stars. These guide stars help the telescope point in one direction or another for long periods so that it can take clear pictures. The designers of the telescope had to think about how it would be repaired if it had problems, which it did. The HST was planned so that it can be repaired in space.
The telescope had problems when it was first launched. The pictures that it took were blurry. Astronauts visited the telescope in 1993 and modified the optical system so that the images were no longer blurry. Other missions were done to service the telescope as well. The last mission was in 2009.
Scientists have said that they plan to use the telescope until the parts stop working. It was only intended to run until 2014; however, scientists think it could now run until 2018. They plan to keep the space telescope running in order to learn as much as they can about space.
The HST is an iconic telescope. It has helped scientists learn much more about space. The HST is able to get close images of objects, and those images are better than what is viewable by telescopes on Earth. Scientists look forward to seeing what else they can learn from the HST during its lifetime.
Question 1
The author wrote this passage to–

inform the reader about space.

persuade the reader that the Hubble Space Telescope is the best space tool.

explain how the Hubble Space Telescope operates.

describe the images the Hubble Space Telescope sends back to Earth.

Question 2
What evidence from the passage helps the reader to know what primary means?

Mirror

Main

Smaller

Light

Question 3
A synonym for iconic is–

famous.

popular.

unimportant.

dreadful.

Question 4
The passage is mostly about–

images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

the Hubble Space Telescope’s impact on learning about space.

the size of the Hubble Space Telescope.

how the Hubble Space Telescope was put into space.

Question 5
What text feature could be added after paragraph two to aid the reader’s understanding?

Graph

Map

Caption

Diagram

Question 6
The reader can tell an optical system is–

light.

a solar panel.

the light path through the telescope.

a tool that sends images.