Hubble to be replaced by JWST
It's official: NASA plans to build the Next Generation Space Telescope - now called the James Webb Space Telescope (James Webb was one of the big honchos at NASA during the Apollo program). It will be about half as big as hubble, but carry a much greater ability to see back in time due to reduced size in microprocessors, circuitry and the like.
It will be launched into remote earth orbit around 2010 (the L2 orbit is almost 950,000 miles away - it will take three months to arrive there from earth) if all goes as planned. It will be the next big step in understanding the universe and hopefully putting much of the science vs. bible nonsense behind us once and for all. Once can only hope for as much, anyway....
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/science/space/17TELE.html?8isc"; target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/science/space/17TELE.html?8isc</a>;
Regardless, the pictures should be nothing short of astounding if the recent upgraded camera shots from Hubble are any indication.
[ 09-17-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
It will be launched into remote earth orbit around 2010 (the L2 orbit is almost 950,000 miles away - it will take three months to arrive there from earth) if all goes as planned. It will be the next big step in understanding the universe and hopefully putting much of the science vs. bible nonsense behind us once and for all. Once can only hope for as much, anyway....
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/science/space/17TELE.html?8isc"; target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/17/science/space/17TELE.html?8isc</a>;
Regardless, the pictures should be nothing short of astounding if the recent upgraded camera shots from Hubble are any indication.
[ 09-17-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>