JWST: Hubble successor faces new delay

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

If this thing actually gets up there and deploys successfully it' will be quite an achievement

There's going to be some twitchy bums on launch day

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The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed yet again and will not now launch until "approximately May 2020".

The James Webb Space Telescope is also in danger of busting the cost cap put on the project by the US Congress.

Back in 2011, politicians on Capitol Hill said the observatory should not take more than $8bn to build and $800m to operate over five years in orbit.

US space agency officials now say the construction bill could exceed the cap.

"To date, Nasa has invested $7.3bn in Webb; Webb's development costs are about $8bn total and the maximum allowable level established by law," explained Acting Nasa Administrator Robert Lightfoot.

"If we breach the $8bn cost laid out in the Congressional appropriations, the project will need to be re-authorised by Congress."

**LINK**

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

[Ed DuffnerParticipant @edduffner79357]

I have a telescope and love stargazing and trying my hand at astro-photography when the weather's good in England, but I sometimes wonder about the cost of some of these space programs when the money could be put to more useful things on earth.

These space telescopes just seem like a nice-to-have. I wonder how much more resolving power the JWST will have than Hubble and how that extra detail and data will benefit the human race – it's a very expensive way to satisfy curiosity.

Ed.

[RainbowsParticipant @rainbows]

The $8bn sounds like a lot till you find the US miltary budget is 34.5 times as much as their Nasa budget. Might be it could be spent better but it could be spent worse too.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Because it is bigger and will look at IR it can see further back in time (and through dust) in more detail than Hubble.

Hopefully…

[michael pottsParticipant @michaelpotts88182]

Every time a new type of telescope or detector comes into use we learn something more about one aspect or another of the universe. These instruments are a far cry from optical telescopes. When the gravitational wave detecting instruments were first got going, they found something within a day, and have since seen another type of event that would appear to explain how the heavy elements were formed in nature. Before this observation the physics did not really work, but the idea was published in 1957 in a paper that described how all the chemical elements had been made in various places and times. The neutrino detectors around the world have seen one event, the 1987a supernova, when around forty neutrinos were detected. One instrument saw a group about five hours before the other instruments saw another burst. That was over thirty years ago, and I am not sure that anyone has ever worked out what happened.

Last week a paper described a type of galaxy known as an ultra diffuse galaxy. A number are known, but how they formed and evolved has got a lot of head scratching going on. I first saw this on Phlil Plait's blog, Bad Astronomy, the next day it had reached the Outside Source on the BBC news channel where an astrophysicist was trying to explain it . That blog is worth reading if you are interested in astronomy, cloud formations or anything else in the sky.

Mike Potts.

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