Hubble telescope heir, telescope James Webb will be ready on time: confirmation from NASA

NASA today confirmed plans for the project of the telescope of James Webb. The management stated that both the current budget and the plans for launching the space telescope for 2018 are relevant. It is worth noting that the agency itself considers this telescope, rather, as the next Hubble model, than its replacement.

The capabilities of the telescope far exceed the capabilities of Hubble. “James Webb” will have a composite mirror 6.5 meters in diameter (the diameter of the Hubble mirror is 2.4 meters) with a collecting area of ​​25 m² and a solar panel the size of a tennis court. The telescope will be located at the L2 point L2 of the Sun-Earth system.


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James Webb will be able to travel to the distant past of the universe - for a time from 100 to 250 million years after the Big Bang. In other words, the new telescope will be able to look much further into the depths of outer space than the Hubble, which can “travel” no further than 800 million - 1 billion years after the Big Bang. In addition, Webb is not "sharpened" under the visible light, its specialization - the infrared spectrum. However, James Webb can capture and radiation, visible to the human eye.


Simulating what the Webb telescope will “see” and what Hubble sees at the same point in space

The complexity of the project

The main problem of such large projects as James Webb and Hubble is the budget. What is the first, what the second project went beyond the budget. But, since a significant part of the budget has already been spent, nothing remains but to continue the implementation of the plans.

In the case of Hubble, the situation was further complicated by the fact that the mirror was initially incorrectly installed. This affected the capabilities of the telescope, and it took a lot of time than the error was corrected using an external expedition, during which corrective lenses were installed.

As for James Webb - the mistake here is unforgivable. As mentioned above, the new telescope is planned to be installed at the Lagrange point L2. If something goes wrong, the project will have to forget. Nevertheless, the chances of successful implementation of the project are quite significant.