If the number are accurate, it's technically impossible for Hubble to see what's going on on earth.
First, the brightness of Earth would damage the instruments aboard the telescope.
Second, HST would have to look down through the atmosphere, which would blur the images and make the actual resolution or sharpness of the Earth images worse than theory suggests.
Finally, the HST orbits the Earth at a speed (27,000 kilometers per hour or 17,000 miles per hour). Its speed in orbit above Earth is so fast that any image it took would be blurred by the motion.
https://earthsky.org/space/can-the-hubble-space-telescope-be-used-to-observe-earth
So is the theory, but that’s what the briefing was. Then it was fixed and could focus out deeper into space.
Crunch all the numbers and give me the radius of what Hubble's lenses should be to be able to read a newspaper from its orbit.
(post is archived)