The lead times on big space telescope projects are so long that astronomers have already started thinking about what to launch in the 2030s, years before the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is launched in 2018.
Scientists at this week’s American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, were excited about a concept called the Large Ultraviolet/Optical Infrared (LUVOIR) telescope, the latest iteration of a long-proposed plan to put an 8- to 12-meter telescope into space (for context, Hubble has a 2.4 meter mirror, and JWST’s is 6.5 meters). The technology needed for LUVOIR is already more advanced than Hubble’s technology was at this early stage, said the Space Telescope Institute’s Mark Postman during an AAS panel discussion.
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