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Fourth and Final 'Great Observatory' To Launch Soon

Posted by michael on from the covering-all-the-bases dept.

Uosdwis writes "The New York Times (FRYYY) has an article about SIRTF, the fourth and last 'Great Observatory'. It is a Space based Infra Red Telescope Facility which will extend the work of The Hubble telescope, The Compton Gamma Ray telescope and The Chandra X-Ray telescope. SIRTF is quite an amazing project using new ideas such as an Earth Trailing starting from an L1 orbit, and cooling only the intruments. Saved tax payers over $1 billion in redesigns. Check it out!"

1 of 9 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not the LAST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This *is* the last 'Great Observatory' and it is closing the doors on the project which created these four telescopes. The article didn't say NASA was not going to make telescopes anymore, just the project was ending. JWST is a telescope, and it could be great, but it was not proposed under the 'GO' project, it was it's own singular project(won by TRW & Ball Aerospace.) The 'GO' projects are the first to choose these parts of the EM spectrum, JWST will produce more science from newer tech but it uses HST & SIRTF as baselines.