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NASA Unveils Hubble's Successor
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu May 10, 2007 11:18 PM
from the new-and-improved dept.
from the new-and-improved dept.
dalutong writes "BBC News has an article detailing NASA's replacement for the much-loved Hubble telescope. The $4.5 billion telescope will be placed in orbit 1.5 million km from Earth and will be almost three times the size of the Hubble. It is set to launch in 2013. They also plan to service the Hubble in 2008."
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Open Standards Planned For Next NASA Telescope 63 comments
BobB writes "A NASA infrared space telescope called the 'James Web Space Telescope' is scheduled to be launched in 2013. The plan is that it will be built using open standards-based software designed to prevent problems caused when software programs developed by various agencies are incompatible with each other, as has been the case with the Hubble telescope. From the article: 'Though open standards has become common in the business sector, Matthews says this is the first time NASA has used the IBM Rational system. "This is a fairly major shift in approach for NASA," he says. "They traditionally have been very conservative in their adoption of new technologies and new tools, but I think they've found that conservative approach just doesn't hold up when you start to reach a [certain] size and complexity."'"
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Looking For Earth-Like Exoplanets 73 comments
Discover Magazine is running a story detailing the search for planets like Earth orbiting other stars. While we've been able to locate a few "super earths" so far, none of them really compare in size or the potential for habitability with our own world. Fortunately, advances in data analysis and new space-based telescopes — such as Kepler, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the already-launched CoRoT (PDF) — have some astronomers predicting we'll find such an exoplanet by 2010, and a habitable one by 2012. Earth-based telescopes are also in the hunt, though the article notes, "even if a habitable Earth-like world is found first from the ground, it will most likely take a space observatory to search for the chemical signals that tell us what we really want to know: Is anything living out there? If the planet is one that can be observed transiting, it just might be possible to provide a hint of an answer in the next few years."
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So if this one breaks ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So if this one breaks ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:So if this one breaks ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I thought space telescopes were obsolete... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I thought space telescopes were obsolete... (Score:4, Interesting)
$5 Billion dollars DOES seem like a lot. But look at the U.S. Budget in the last decade. Look at the money we've essentially THROWN AWAY. By comparison, $5 billion for an advancement of science seems rather reasonable, or at the very least, reasonable by comparison.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:So if this one breaks ... (Score:5, Funny)
They're far more likely to do something new - like tell it to go to the other side of the sun, via the centre of the sun.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So if this one breaks ... (Score:5, Funny)
That's ok, they can get it to land at night.
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Keeping Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
An servicing the Hubble is judged to be so risky that NASA originally did not plan to do it. Now they intend to do it, but with a backup shuttle in orbit in case the first one gets into trouble.
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Re:Keeping Hubble (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Keeping Hubble (Score:5, Informative)
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Rent solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
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Re:Keeping Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
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We dont need hubble for visible... (Score:2, Informative)
Dont forget that "hugely expensive" for a ground telescope is compareable to "dirt-cheap" for a space-based one.
All 4 of the VLT telescopes were (IIRC) cheaper than a single hubble service mission. And OWL should be compareable to a modern space-telescope, too, for a fraction of the price (dont forget: its a tradeoff: better seeing vs "have to design a mirrror that can withstand the acceleraion and f
Re:We dont need hubble for visible... (Score:5, Informative)
Your cost estimates are accurate, but the rest of your argument is total shit. Adaptive optics, WHEN it works (which is rarely, and with difficulty), can approach the angular resolution of HST in a VERY SMALL field of view. You cannot get 0.05 arcsec, diffraction limited images over a wide field of view, that is possible with HST.
"Designing a mirror to withstand a launch vehicle" is a problem that has been solved. And the only two current, viable telescope proposals for telescopes larger than 10m are the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT [tmt.org]) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT [gmto.org]). OWL is not a concept that is being taken very seriously...ESO certainly hasn't put its money where its mouth is.
Your final point, about not many lines in that part of the spectrum, belies a complete lack of understanding of what you are talking about. The UV (accessible with STIS, and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, which will fly on SM4 in late '08) are so full of lines that they overlap all over the place. See, for example, Morton (2003), ApJS, 149, 205, for a comprehensive list. At low redshift, lines of HI, OI, OVI, CIV, NV, CII, SiII, SII, FeII, NI...all are in the UV, in the STIS band. Furthermore, space is the ONLY place these wavelengths can be observed, because of the atmosphere is opaque to wavelengths shorter than about 3300 angstroms.
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Re:We dont need hubble for visible... (Score:5, Funny)
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My only thought was that if it is to replace Hubble it should be able to do everything Hubble can and then some.
Re:We dont need hubble for visible... (Score:4, Funny)
You must be new here.
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Re:Keeping Hubble (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be retarded; the most dangerous phases of the mission are launch and reentry, with a significantly lower risk of something going wrong while in orbit; something likely to either be so terrible you can't do anything or managable enough that you have a good long while to worry about it (e.g one of the tiles gets damaged at launch and you can't reenter safely, ala Columbia).
So no, it won't be in orbit, the backup shuttle will simply be ready to launch if needed.
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Re:Keeping Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you please site a source for this? Right now the software cannot actually support more than one shuttle in orbit at a time, if you look there has never been more than one up at a time. If there were this type of upgrade coming I could buy that story, but considering we're going to retire the fleet soon I don't see that as likely. I haven't installed any Aries specific equipment yet, but judging by the age of most of the shuttle specific equipment on the ground they're not going to do that level of a software rewrite for the shuttle when the fleets this close to retirement. Another issue with this statement is the shear altitude of the Hubble, well above ISS orbit. If we launched one into high orbit, and kept one at low orbit the one in low orbit simply wouldn't be able to reach the one in high orbit without landing for fuel anyways. Those things launch with their trajectories pretty much set and only do slight manuvering. STS-125 is the designated flight for Hubble servicing to be done by Atlantis, there is an as yet unnumbered contingency rescue flight, I don't think they number those unless they launch these days. They may put Discovery on the pad in ready position for rescue, but I seriously doubt they'll launch it unless they have to.
On another note:
There are emergency two shuttle protocols. What that comes down to more or less is equipment time sharing.
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Grou nd based solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]
Re:Keeping Hubble (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, the JWST is an infrared telescope. But, as another post further down alludes to incorrectly (for which they were smacked down and corrected by someone else) the James Webb is able to see further back into the history of the universe than we have ever been able to observe. What started out as visible light all those billions of years ago (and billions of light years away) becomes red-shifted into the infrared as the universe expands and, in a nearly literal fashion, stretches out that incoming light.
So while the Hubble has been responsible for a lot of great science, and truly breath-taking images, we have the potential to do so much more and better understand our universe with the JWST. We haven't maxed out the potential of the Hubble (probably never would), and I would love to keep it, but if there's only enough to deploy the JWST (and it's already been pushed back by several years), or keep on servicing the Hubble, my vote would be in favour of the JWST.
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Completely Offtopic!!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Move on to the next subject!!!!
I have Karma to burn....mod's do not hold any fear for me!!!!
is it just me (Score:5, Funny)
Gaia (Score:5, Interesting)
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Let's hope they will agree on non-intersecating orbits for Gaia and JWST.
Gaia team: Hey! We were here first!
JWST team: "Here"? You are oscillating all around the place!
Gaia team: Ours is an elegant Lissajous orbit. What is yours?
JWST team: We'll pwn the L2 point itself!
Gaia team: No way! Our probe will intersect it in 13 days.
JWST team: Metric days or imperi
Oldest pictures of the universe (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Oldest pictures of the universe (Score:5, Informative)
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Six years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Six years? (Score:5, Funny)
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Let me guess.... (Score:3, Funny)
-Mike
sunshield? (Score:5, Interesting)
ignatius
Re:sunshield? (Score:5, Informative)
Earth only has 12000km diameter. Sun has 1.4 million km diameter.
For earth to give shade, it would have to be closer than AU*(r_earth/r_sun), which is much closer than the lagrange point.
Simply put: you would get a dark spot on the sun, but no complete cover.
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Why not build two? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's my understanding that there's a substantial waiting list to use Hubble, and that a lot of very good research can't get done because telescope time is so limited. Time on JWST will probably be similarly limited... if we've spent $3.5B on this thing so far, why not put an extra $250M into it and get twice the benefit?
Any experts care to weigh in?
By the way,... (Score:3, Interesting)
from French Guyana.
http://www.uibk.ac.at/ipoint/news/images/esa_pic_
What's in a name? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Hubble [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Edwin_Webb [wikipedia.org]
Name a scientist (Score:3, Insightful)
It looks like James Webb was administor from 1961 to 1968, some very important years in spaceflight I'd say. The last moon walk was taken a year before I was born, so I don't have any direct experience with that era of space exploration. But I'm still amazed at how fast NASA moved from launching a satellite into orbit to putting men on the fricking moon and bringing them back safely. I wouldn't be surprised if this were in large part due to good leadership without which those accomplishments would have h
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Re:color me not impressed (Score:5, Informative)
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To quote the article...and wikipedia...and NASA... (Score:5, Informative)
To add more evidence. Look, wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Edwin_Webb [wikipedia.org]
To 1-up wikipedia. Look, NASA!
http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/whois.html [nasa.gov]
The man whose name NASA has chosen to bestow upon the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is most commonly linked to the Apollo moon program, not to science. Yet, many believe that James E. Webb, who ran the fledgling space agency from February 1961 to October 1968, did more for science than perhaps any other government official and that it is only fitting that the Next Generation Space Telescope would be named after him.
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Re:Haha (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The light's long gone! (Score:5, Interesting)
The most important aspect here might also be the fact that space expansion is a local event. On a large enough "distance", the speed of that event, if we just tried to add together the relative expansion per unit length, would exceed c. It can certainly approach it. There is/should be matter much farther away than the 2 * 15 bly "bubble" that would be the theoretical maximum of matter simply going in all directions at the point of Big Bang.
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