Comments by "H. de Jong" (@h.dejong2531) on "‘American Built’ explores the story behind the first telescope in orbit" video.

  1. The US has spy satellites to do that. Hubble can't photograph targets on Earth: it can't rotate fast enough to keep a position on Earth in focus.
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  2.  @jimmybutler3728  The US military has launched 17 KH-11 spy satellites between 1976 and now. These are optimized for Earth observation and are much better at it than Hubble. Hubble was built publicly. You can't sneak in the equipment a spy satellite would need in such an environment. All of Hubble's images are public; it has no time to do Earth observation in between the published observations.
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  3. The title is incorrect. Hubble wasn't the first space telescope. About 35 space telescopes were launched before Hubble. The first was a Russian project called Proton-1, which was launched in 1965. The first visible-light telescope was ESA's Hipparcos, in 1989.
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