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Science NASA Unveils Hubble's Successor
Michael Hoffman (Blog) - May 15, 2007 10:18 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 47 comment(s) - last by Maxmars.. on May 16 at 11:14 PM
The telescope Hubble's successor is scheduled to launch in June 2013

NASA officials unveiled a model of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a new telescope which is expected to replace the aging Hubble space telescope.  The $4.5 billion space telescope is bigger than the Hubble and will sit further from Earth.  The total expected cost of the project is almost $3 billion cheaper than the original Hubble project.

The JWST will be 80ft long by 40ft. high and will have a mirror nearly three times the size of the one used on the Hubble.  The 21ft. mirror will allow scientists to see further into the history of space.  Norhrop Grumman, the contractor responsible for building the JWST telescope, expects it to have a 10-year lifespan.

The full-scale model of the JWST is currently on display near the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.  Although budget issues continue to plague NASA, all technical and cost schedules have reportedly been met for the past 20 months.

"We're making excellent progress in meeting all of our plans and commitments for a mid-2013 launch," said Martin Mohan, a Northrop Grumman project manager.

Until JWST is launched, NASA plans on continuing to service the Hubble -- NASA plans on launching at least one mission designed specifically for Hubble repair.

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sad
By Samus on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: sad
By Hulk on 5/15/2007 11:27:40 AM , Rating: 4
Yup. We need to get out and let the slaughter begin like when we pulled out of Vietnam.

Like you I don't care about those people, only my space telescope.


RE: sad
By Stablecannon on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: sad
By OrSin on 5/15/2007 2:29:03 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah and staying Vietnam would have done so much good.

Iraq like Vietnam we should have never sent forces. And dont act like we sent in troops to help the countries, if that was the case we should have sent troops to a dozen africa coutries for the last 10 years.

And for the record the slaughter started the day we showed up.


RE: sad
By Stablecannon on 5/15/2007 2:45:19 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
And dont act like we sent in troops to help the countries, if that was the case we should have sent troops to a dozen africa coutries for the last 10 years.


Well said.


RE: sad
By jskirwin on 5/15/2007 9:24:36 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
And for the record the slaughter started the day we showed up.


No, that's only when you started noticing. It started well before you were even (most likely) born.


RE: sad
By HubbleBubble on 5/16/2007 12:30:16 PM , Rating: 2
Yup, Saddam, at his butchering worst, went wholesale with the
slaughter back in the '80s - supported, armed & financed by the
West when it was said that, to quote internal US administration
memos: "Iraq's interests coincide with ours".


RE: sad
By jskirwin on 5/15/2007 10:12:57 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
And dont act like we sent in troops to help the countries, if that was the case we should have sent troops to a dozen africa coutries for the last 10 years.


Right, so my stepson in the Corps did a tour in East Timor for the surfing. Or his friend in the Army did a stint in Kosovo because Albanian chicks are freakin' HOOOOTTT.

It's a lot cooler to slap a bumpersticker on your car that says Save Darfur . However send the Marines to actually save the place and you would be screaming American Imperialism .


RE: sad
By Ringold on 5/15/2007 10:27:36 PM , Rating: 3
Indeed. They'd say we have no respect for international law, diplomacy, due process or anything else, just a desire to go and blast apart countries we don't like.

In doing so, they'd skim over entirely the UN and AU's abysmal failure to force the government of Sudan to lift a finger to stop the genocide. They'd say we should talk more in the UN first, use the UN to levy sanctions or whatnot. Guess what? The UN has been; they've resisted (like Iraq). The UN wanted to put troops on the ground, and now they've been given permission to, but guess what? The EU, first of all, has suddenly realized it doesn't have the military capacity to really do the job properly, and even if they did, Sudan's got them under heavy restrictions and if Sudan asked them to leave, they probably would (like the cowards did in Rwanda).

Yet if we said we were sick of Sudan's games and went in, guns blazing, and eradicated the Janjaweed (sp?) and all their ilk, even if we left in the style of the first Gulf War, we'd be villified by the left. They'd probably point at the oil fields in the other regions of Sudan, find some American contractor that's been there for decades, link together a million dots to link back to a Republican, and it'd all be over American Imperialism looking out for 'Big Oil'.

Can't win for losing.


RE: sad
By HubbleBubble on 5/16/2007 12:32:03 PM , Rating: 2
Ha, that we're just getting posturing and that they're
not going in to "save" it is the hypocrisy.


RE: sad
By shaggeo68 on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: sad
By tmarat on 5/15/2007 11:44:55 AM , Rating: 2
He he. a topic about a space telescope and the issue of Iraq comes along :)

Below is my comment:
While I agree that a ruthless dictator had been removed from power (good thing), but I disagree with an idea that USA intervention is making middle east more stable. I think it has become more unstable than before.


RE: sad
By jskirwin on 5/15/2007 9:29:10 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I think it has become more unstable than before.


Tell me, when was Middle East ever stable? At least the Iraqis have a fighting chance at peace, something they have never ever had - and would be damned to eternal slavery if you so-called "liberals" had your way.

And one segment of Iraq is already living quite peacefully: the Kurds. In 1988 they were being gassed; today they are watching the Sunnis and Shiites beat the crap out of each other. Meanwhile their economy grows, as do their ambitions.


RE: sad
By Ringold on 5/15/2007 10:29:56 PM , Rating: 2
The Roman's had them under their heel pretty well, until they started to become weak. When the half-measures and apathy started to flow, the Arabs, Persians, and so-called "barbarians" could smell the blood in the water, and we all know what ended up happening there. History doesn't repeat itself, no, never.


RE: sad
By tmarat on 5/16/2007 4:46:12 AM , Rating: 2
What makes you think you know what Iraqis want?
One segment might be living peacefully, but others (majority) are in a bloody fight.


RE: sad
By HubbleBubble on 5/16/2007 12:36:59 PM , Rating: 2
> At least the Iraqis have a fighting chance at peace,
> something they have never ever had - and would be
> damned to eternal slavery if you so-called "liberals"
> had your way.

Let's see...since the 2003 invasion: Two thirds of a million
dead and three and a half million driven out of their homes in
fear - two million fleeing the country altogether, putting
enormous strain on and further increasing tensions in
neighbouring countries. The majority of Iraq's population
want us out and over half actually support attacks on coalition
forces.
...Because you "right-wingers" had your way. You must be proud. LOL


RE: sad
By Seemonkeyscanfly on 5/15/2007 12:30:53 PM , Rating: 5
Here’s a way to get two birds with one stone…
Make the mirror a little bigger and add a GPS unit that can find people then point it at the bad guys from space. All they will see is a bright powerful light from the heavens falling down on them then bam! In a second or two the bad guy is totally on fire running around scream his head off. This should scare the sh*t out of ooooh everyone. Even more effective if NASA would to say, we have no idea where such a power light could have come from, but something sure does like those bad guys….
I think peace would arrive in the middle east shortly after that, then we could turn it toward the depths of space.


RE: sad
By noirsoft on 5/15/2007 2:06:24 PM , Rating: 2
And, it can double as the world's largest popcorn popper.

(Yes, that is a "Real Genius" reference)


RE: sad
By Seemonkeyscanfly on 5/15/2007 4:42:04 PM , Rating: 2
wow, that's a flash back.


RE: sad
By mezman on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: sad
By zornundo on 5/15/2007 1:19:03 PM , Rating: 2
Not only that, but I read somewhere that the DoD's space budget exceeds NASA's. that's just plain sad.


RE: sad
By drank12quartsstrohsbeer on 5/15/2007 1:25:36 PM , Rating: 2
who do you think paid for all those GPS satellites?


RE: sad
By ElFenix on 5/15/2007 9:01:41 PM , Rating: 3
why should NASA be the only people doing space projects? maybe if the airforce hadn't canned its manned space projects in favor of NASA back in the early 60s we'd have something better than a bus riding an air/fuel bomb as a heavy lift/manned space vehicle.


RE: sad
By Ringold on 5/15/2007 10:04:27 PM , Rating: 1
Except the DOD provides infrastructure and resources for national defense. Yeah, defense, that's sad..?


What hubble successor?
By maven81 on 5/15/2007 1:42:19 PM , Rating: 2
NASA can't honestly claim that this is a Hubble successor considering last I heard it was designed to operate in only one wavelength region, infrared. The Hubble can also observe in ultraviolet, not to mention the obvious, visible light. Once the hubble is gone, that capability will be gone with it.

Second, if you're going to claim Iraq is more important, you better do some critical thinking first. As has been mentioned the DoD has these things called spy satellites, remember them? Rumor is among the modern ones, many are equivalent in price to the hubble space telescope, or more expensive then this one. Considering the "quality" of the intelligence they seem to be gathering I'd say you're barking up the wrong tree. Forbid the DoD to spend more money on such useless projects, and give that money to NASA instead. (Yes I know there's a possibility the spy satellites are actually collecting useful data and these findings are simply getting tossed or ignored. But it's the end result that counts, they do not seem to be a good investment).




RE: What hubble successor?
By teldar on 5/15/2007 6:12:39 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
last I heard it was designed to operate in only one wavelength region, infrared


I havn't heard much about it, however, if it has a mirror, it can operate in our visible light spectrum. It would be able to operate in infrared and ultraviolet and anything else that can reflect off a mirror if we have the sensors for them. Since we can do IR and UV cameras as well as Visible, it should be able to do all three if they put all the sensors in. There shouldn't be any way to limit it to one band of light unless it is poorly equipped.

Hopefully they are smarter than that. Since they can design it, I would think they probably are.

T


RE: What hubble successor?
By Shadowself on 5/15/2007 6:58:04 PM , Rating: 3
JWST is infrared only.

This is NOT one "color" like was implied or even one wavelength. IR is a very broad band of "colors" that your eyes just cannot see. In fact IR is a much, much broader band than the visible spectrum.

While the article seems to make a big deal about how much larger the JWST is than the Hubble, this larger size is necesssary in order to deal with the significantly longer wavelenths of IR as compared to visible.

What the IR bands utilized in JWST will allow is looking more deeply into regions that Hubble could not. Different areas of space have different opacities due to what's there. JWST will give a different picture of what's there -- sometimes much further than Hubble.

It is a different instrument. It's not just a "better, newer Hubble".


RE: What hubble successor?
By maven81 on 5/15/2007 10:22:07 PM , Rating: 2
I wasn't implying that it's just one wavelength. Indeed the near and far infrared cover a broader area of the spectrum. However, the JWST was designed from the start to be an infrared observatory. It's not a general purpose observatory like the hubble. As you said, a different instrument.
There's definitely a surge in infrared astronomy these days, but I'm sure visible light has not outlived it's usefullness.


RE: What hubble successor?
By Maxmars on 5/16/2007 11:14:10 PM , Rating: 2
Excellent explanation!


RE: What hubble successor?
By theapparition on 5/16/2007 9:55:15 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
however, if it has a mirror, it can operate in our visible light spectrum.

Not true. Telescope mirrors are specialized, not the same as your bathroom mirror. It's the coating on the glass that gives its spectrum viewing capacity. Certain coatings are better than others in a particular spectrum. Unfortunately, there is no "one-size-fits-all" coating. Aluminum preforms well in the visible spectrum, but does not reflect IR or UV very well. If I remember correctly, gold reflects IR the best, so if that's the intended application, the mirror most likely will be coated with gold.


RE: What hubble successor?
By Ringold on 5/15/2007 10:20:57 PM , Rating: 3
Everybody ought to do some critical thinking.

The budget? It's big. It's really astoundingly incomprehensibly big. There are hundreds of agencies doing thousands of different, expensive things. Meanwhile, tax revenue has reached an all-time high, and assuming the Bush tax cuts are kept, will be in surplus in 2012. Not that slight (in terms of % of GDP) budget deficits are even bad; they give financial markets something to chew on, called bonds, without doing any harm to the economy as a whole.

With this astoundingly huge budget, and astoundingly huge tax base, in a country with an astoundingly massive amount of income, we have this luxury of DOING MORE THAN ONE THING AT ONCE, FFS. Jamacia? Probably can't do much more than one large project at once. 13 trillion dollar United States? A little different.

We can feed millions on welfare, millions on food stamps, provide for the health of millions on Medicaid and Medicare, and even provide for housing for millions on subsidized housing -- while still operating NASA, inspecting food, fighting wild fires. (Yes, hippies, whining about not having troops at home to fight disaster has fallen flat as Florida has more than it can even use, with 13,000 in reserve) And beyond all that, yes, we can even carry on war. The only way anyone would even know we're at war is to visit a major airport hub and look at all the people in uniform going to and fro. NASA's budget could be doubled, tripled, or quadrupled, and it'd be a mere rounding error compared to the sums spent on Social Security payments.

Bringing up Iraq just show's there's a lot of liberals that need to go have a drink, meet a girl, or do something to otherwise reduce their insane angst. No logical reason in the least for the war in Iraq to even be appearing here; there's no connection in the least, not even a distant one, and in truth their budgets have nothing to do with each other UNLESS it's MADE political by one party or the other with some insane application of unsound political grandstanding "pay as you go" bull or some such trickery.


RE: What hubble successor?
By maven81 on 5/16/2007 4:51:29 PM , Rating: 2
Wow... I don't know which mythical country you're talking about, but it's not the one we live in. If it would be so easy
to theoretically quadruple the NASA budget, why are they struggling to get even a fraction of that approved every year?
The war has no economic impact... really? Then why is the military facing a shortage of funds in the first place? If you were correct the Apollo program never would have been killed and we would have had moon bases by now.


Here's a good name for the successor..
By Link on 5/15/2007 4:46:01 PM , Rating: 2
NASA unveils Hubble's Successor, Bubble!

Seriously, how much did they spend trying to fix Hubble?




RE: Here's a good name for the successor..
By Ringold on 5/15/2007 10:32:11 PM , Rating: 2
With this launching so soon, I wonder why bother to continue to fix Hubble.. Free up some cash for any of the many other worthy projects that haven't survived the chopping block.


By theapparition on 5/16/2007 9:58:18 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
With this launching so soon, I wonder why bother to continue to fix Hubble.

So all the scientist who use should just go on vacation for 6years until the planned launch?
What if the project gets cut? Are they SOL?


mirrror
By Oregonian2 on 5/15/2007 3:47:33 PM , Rating: 2
Just hope they test the mirror before launch to see if it has the right curvature. The Hubble's was pretty useless when it went up and the "corrector" that made it more useful later when installed still wasn't as good as having the mirror correct to begin with. As I recall anyway.




Purpose..
By Fubar0606 on 5/15/2007 4:56:26 PM , Rating: 2
I totally agree but, I, I mean We all know how incompetent our Govt. has been lately, but If they did not need the spy satellites why put them into use... I think that we should double fit them all! with 21ft mirrors on the back so they can all have multiple uses, but this new telescope is going deeper into space I mean it would go say as far as the moon or farther and look at the universe, beam the info back.




Iraq more important?
By flydef on 5/15/07, Rating: 0
RE: Iraq more important?
By cochy on 5/15/2007 1:37:33 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Now please do not use flawed logic to quote me as saying any of these things:


You'd have done better to actually read his post before replying to it.

http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7255&comm...


2013???
By goku on 5/15/07, Rating: -1
RE: 2013???
By FITCamaro on 5/15/2007 11:06:28 AM , Rating: 2
WTF?


RE: 2013???
By codeThug on 5/15/2007 11:18:24 AM , Rating: 2
shhhhhh it's called humor... don't tell anyone.


RE: 2013???
By cochy on 5/15/2007 1:39:27 PM , Rating: 2
I think he, like many other, myself included are finding it difficult to understand the joke there.


RE: 2013???
By ksherman on 5/15/2007 2:17:58 PM , Rating: 2
agreed... huh?


RE: 2013???
By GoatMonkey on 5/15/2007 2:21:16 PM , Rating: 2
I guess he's saying that he's from the future. Or he's talking about a date bug in some software. Either way, it's stretching a bit.


RE: 2013???
By mezman on 5/15/2007 3:13:53 PM , Rating: 2
If you understand, please explain it to the rest of us because in order to be funny, people need to understand what the joke is about.


RE: 2013???
By Oregonian2 on 5/15/2007 3:45:09 PM , Rating: 2
Isn't "humor" supposed to be funny?


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