Who killed Hubble?

Hi everyone!

Big point being missed here: Hubble was designed for astronomy, not
planetary mapping.

Look at Mars Global Surveyor - a satellite designed for mapping. Yes, it
has a wide angle camera. And in six years and about 120 000 images by its
high resolution, narrow angle camera, it's covered ~3% of the planet to a
couple of metres' resolution.

Now, the /biggest/ field of view you can get with Hubble, is about 200
arcseconds - 0.05 of a degree. That's a narrow angle camera. To match the
Mars Orbiter Camera's field-of-view and high resolution, Hubble would have
to orbit the Moon at a distance of about 3500km. Approximately a 7-hour
orbit, whose mission duration would be absolutely decades for anything like
full coverage.

Hmmm. I'd prefer /going there/ to "staring at it".

Andy