Had not read much about this new telescope and sadly, its budget mis-forecast: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-20022455-239.html?tag=cnetRiver
"NASA management miscues threaten to drive up the cost of the agency's next generation space telescope by some $1.5 billion, an independent review panel reported today, pushing the overall cost of the project into the neighborhood of $6.5 billion. That's a best-case assessment that assumes the agency launches the observatory in 2015, the earliest realistic target."
"The James Webb Space Telescope, named after NASA's second administrator, promises to push the frontiers of knowledge back almost to the big bang explosion that created the universe.
"We've all seen the stunning results that have come out from Hubble over the last nearly two decades," said astronomer Garth Illingworth, a member of the JWST review panel. "The James Webb is a hugely more powerful facility than Hubble, a hundred times more powerful at least."
Optimized to study infrared light emitted from the most ancient stars and galaxies, JWST is expected to give astronomers a glimpse of the first generation of stars to form in the wake of the big bang.
Unlike Hubble, which rode into orbit aboard a space shuttle, the JWST will be launched by an unmanned European Ariane 5 rocket and boosted to a location known as the sun-Earth Lagrange point about one million miles from Earth. Satellites placed at gravitationally balanced Lagrange points can maintain stable orbits around the sun without the need for frequent rocket-powered maneuvers.
To save money and simplify the engineering challenge, JWST was not designed to be serviced or repaired by spacewalking astronauts. Once launched, the telescope will be on its own for the duration of its five-and-a-half-year design life or however long it stays healthy.
At the heart of the JWST is a huge, 21-foot-wide segmented mirror that is 2.7 times wider than Hubble's with about six times more light-collecting area. An instrument module is located below the mirror to analyze the ancient light collected by the telescope.
Once in space, the JWST will unfold like a huge mechanical origami. A giant five-layer sunshade the size of a tennis court will unfold to shade the mirror, helping keep it at an operating temperature of about 50 degrees above absolute zero. The mirror itself will unfold to achieve its full diameter, along with an adjustable secondary mirror mounted at the apex of three folding support masts.
The JWST will weigh about 14,300 pounds on Earth, about half the weight of the Hubble Space Telescope with its heavy one-piece mirror and closed-tube design. But given the one-shot make-or-break nature of the mission, the telescope's state-of-the-art systems must work perfectly right out of the box for the mission to succeed...."
"NASA management miscues threaten to drive up the cost of the agency's next generation space telescope by some $1.5 billion, an independent review panel reported today, pushing the overall cost of the project into the neighborhood of $6.5 billion. That's a best-case assessment that assumes the agency launches the observatory in 2015, the earliest realistic target."
"The James Webb Space Telescope, named after NASA's second administrator, promises to push the frontiers of knowledge back almost to the big bang explosion that created the universe.
"We've all seen the stunning results that have come out from Hubble over the last nearly two decades," said astronomer Garth Illingworth, a member of the JWST review panel. "The James Webb is a hugely more powerful facility than Hubble, a hundred times more powerful at least."
Optimized to study infrared light emitted from the most ancient stars and galaxies, JWST is expected to give astronomers a glimpse of the first generation of stars to form in the wake of the big bang.
Unlike Hubble, which rode into orbit aboard a space shuttle, the JWST will be launched by an unmanned European Ariane 5 rocket and boosted to a location known as the sun-Earth Lagrange point about one million miles from Earth. Satellites placed at gravitationally balanced Lagrange points can maintain stable orbits around the sun without the need for frequent rocket-powered maneuvers.
To save money and simplify the engineering challenge, JWST was not designed to be serviced or repaired by spacewalking astronauts. Once launched, the telescope will be on its own for the duration of its five-and-a-half-year design life or however long it stays healthy.
At the heart of the JWST is a huge, 21-foot-wide segmented mirror that is 2.7 times wider than Hubble's with about six times more light-collecting area. An instrument module is located below the mirror to analyze the ancient light collected by the telescope.
Once in space, the JWST will unfold like a huge mechanical origami. A giant five-layer sunshade the size of a tennis court will unfold to shade the mirror, helping keep it at an operating temperature of about 50 degrees above absolute zero. The mirror itself will unfold to achieve its full diameter, along with an adjustable secondary mirror mounted at the apex of three folding support masts.
The JWST will weigh about 14,300 pounds on Earth, about half the weight of the Hubble Space Telescope with its heavy one-piece mirror and closed-tube design. But given the one-shot make-or-break nature of the mission, the telescope's state-of-the-art systems must work perfectly right out of the box for the mission to succeed...."
