The James Webb Space Telescope

Greenlantern101

Super Hero And All Round Good Guy
Contributor
To launch in 2018 the biggest space telescope we have ever made is getting much closer to looking like a telescope now. The main mirror is now having the finishing pieces attached. The JWST mirror is 6.5 meters accross the Hubble by comparison is 2.4 meters.

The pictures should make Hubble look a bit rubbish. I'm excited by this one.

Watch it being assembled live here James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NASA

BBC update
James Webb: Hubble successor maintains course - BBC News

Who is James Webb? click here.
 
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As this is 2016, and it's not going to be launched until 2018, I will repeat, that getting it out there will be very tricky.
 
This is promising to be a great instrument.

However, I can't help but feel a bit bitter, about how this project going massively over budget has caused NASA to drop many other promising programs, including pulling out of all major joint missions with ESA (including LISA, ATHENA, and JUICE).
 
Well he's already set to scrap NASA' s Climate Change Research programme, as part of a crackdown on what he calls "politicized Science"...
 
Erm, isn't it something like 111 million light years away? By the time they get our response we will probably have wiped ourselves out.
 
Nope, only 111 light years according to the article not 111 million light years.

This means the light we see from it originated in 1908. If life on that planet progressed in parallel to ours we should be picking up radio waves in and around the MF/HF spectrum by now. This was the early era of wireless telegraphy and the Marconi company.
 
No it's a lot closer than that, it only takes one or two million years to get there, I'm not sure of the average speed though, don't think it was at. light speed
 
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