This week scientists at NASA and space enthusiasts around the world celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. However, even as the celebrations were going on and Hubble’s list of incredible accomplishments were being listed, many eyes started turning to the next generation.
For all of its amazing discoveries, the Hubble was built using the best available technology of the 1970s and 80s. The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in October, 2018 should dwarf the accomplishments of Hubble.
The Hubble Space Telescope was originally supposed to launch in 1983 but construction delays pushed that date back to 1990. Even then it took a servicing mission in 1993 to correct a flaw in Hubble’s mirror so that it could start sending accurate data.
Since that time, Hubble has built up an impressive list of accomplishments. These include discovering the true age of the universe, detecting the rate at which the universe is expanding, gathering information about the formation of stars and galaxies in the early universe, the discovery of supermassive black holes, the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system and collecting better observations about the planets and moons in our solar system.
Those are just a few of the many discoveries made with the 25 year old space telescope. All in all it is a pretty amazing list for a telescope that came from the same generation of technology that gave us the Commodore 64 home computer and the Hubble is expected to continue to function for at least another five years.
Like it’s predecessor, the James Webb Space Telescope is behind schedule and over budget. According to the original timeline the Webb should have been launched this year and cost $3.3 billion less than current estimates.
Using more advanced instruments from a deeper point in space than Hubble, the Webb telescope should allow researchers to peer back into the earliest days of the Universe and more carefully analyze what was happening at the time. It will help detect new exoplanets and will have the ability to analyze the chemical composition of the atmospheres of those planets and possibly detect planets that are capable of supporting life like our own.
This week, partially in preparation for the launch of the new telescope, NASA launched the NExSS initiative which will bring together scientists from a variety of fields including astrophysicists, planetary scientists, Earth scientists, atmospheric scientists, biologists, chemists and others to determine what constitutes a “habitable” planet. The researchers from almost every division of NASA as well as more than a dozen universities and institutions will help the Webb and other telescopes to know what to look for.
The Webb telescope isn’t expected to last as long as Hubble has. When it reaches its final position, the Webb will be orbiting one million miles from Earth and servicing and repair missions will be nearly impossible. However, by the time the new telescope’s missions are done, scientists should have a reasonably accurate map of the cosmos as well as a much clearer picture of its history.
“I fully expect Webb to have the same sort of groundbreaking effect on astronomy that Hubble has had, It’s going to be so much more powerful that I think it will once again revolutionize the way we understand the universe,” Amber Straughn, a NASA astronomer, told Mashable.
Every new discovery also leads to new questions and like Hubble, the Webb is expected to provide information that no one has thought to ask for yet.
“Hubble rewrote the text books and we’re planning to rewrite the text books again. JWST will answer the questions which at the moment we can’t think to ask,” said NASA spokesperson Lynn Chandler to CNN.
Additional information about the James Webb Space Telescope is available on the NASA website. There are even two web cams, or Webb cams, where people can watch the construction of the telescope in real time and free ebooks from NASA about the Webb and Hubble telescopes.
