Hubble’s costly successor is squeezing other mission budgets
OCT 27, 2010
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.024781
Nature : To justify its existence, NASA’s next big space-based optical observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, must significantly outperform its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. Great leaps forward in performance are not cheap. From its perch at the second Lagrangian point 1.5 million km from Earth, JWST will observe young distant galaxies with a mirror that is three times wider than Hubble‘s and with detectors that must be kept no warmer than 50 degrees above absolute zero. Launch is scheduled for 2014. Before then, NASA’s engineers and scientists are conducting extensive tests and reviews to ensure that the expensive telescope will work as planned. And, as Nature‘s Lee Billings reports, JWST‘s price tag, which stands at $5 billion, is so great that it’s starving or delaying other missions.
© 2010 American Institute of Physics
