The Space Telescope

The Space Telescope, still under construction, is discussed in light of the constraints imposed on ground-based telescopes. The history of the Space Telescope is traced from its conceptual origin to its actual construction, and design considerations used to determine the Space Telescope construction are described. The optical system of the telescope will have an aperture of 2.4 m, a focal ratio of 24, and a front of primary to focus of 1.5 m. The fine guidance system will use astigmatic images at the edge of the field of view to provide the guidance signal for maintaining stability to 0.007 arcseconds. The guidestars are required for 85% of random fields located at the galactic poles, and the system sensitivity must meet performance specifications for stars brighter than 13.5 magnitude. The scientific instruments - the wide field camera, the faint object camera, the faint object spectrograph, the high resolution spectrograph, the high speed photometer, and the fine guidance sensors - are discussed in detail. Finally, the operations system, including schedule contraints and the Science Institute, is presented.