Monday, August 1, 2011

James Webb Space Telescope To be Scrapped

Revolutionary, yet costly - will NASA budget cuts kill the James Webb Space Telescope - already funded to the tune of US$3 billion but expected to cost double the amount by the time it is launched? Credit: NASA

Will Cost Kill Hubble’s Successor? -- Cosmos

A plan to scrap the James Webb Space Telescope, the long-awaited and costly heir to NASA’s Hubble telescope.

TOUTED AS NASA'S replacement for the ageing Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, if deployed, would be 100 times more powerful than its iconic predecessor.

"It will have incredible sensitivity and spatial resolution, making it able to look back to the very earliest times in the universe," says Warrick Couch, an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Yet funding cuts now seriously threaten the telescope's future, already over budget and years behind schedule, with bleak implications for future U.S. investment in astronomy projects of this scale.

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