Son of Hubble, Prepare for a 2013 Liftoff

Wired : The Hubble Space Telescope is 17 years old âmdash; that’s like 150 to you and me. Next year, the geriatric orbiting eye will receive its final tune-up, and soon it will go live on a farm where it can play with other obsolete space-based observatories. The good news is that NASA scientists have already cooked up a replacement. The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for a 2013 launch, folds to fit into the cone of a rocket for deeper deployment than its predecessor. Once in orbit, it will capture infrared instead of visible light and âmdash; since distance equals time in space âmdash; will be able to see back to about 400 million years after the big bang. That should let it snag shots of the first bright objects, the origins of planetary systems, and the assembly of galaxies. “Every time you get new capabilities, you see a quantum jump in progress,” says Mark Clampin, the observatory’s project scientist. “I’m sure we’ll discover things we’ve never seen before.”