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NASA Approves Five More Years For Hubble Space Telescope (newscientist.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: NASA has announced plans to extend operations of the famous space telescope for another five years, through to June 2021. That means it will still be on the job when its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launches in 2018, giving astronomers a dual view of the universe. "Hubble is expected to continue to provide valuable data into the 2020s, securing its place in history as an outstanding general-purpose observatory in areas ranging from our solar system to the distant universe," said a NASA statement. Squeezing more life out of Hubble means it will overlap with NASA's next big telescope, JWST when it launches in 2018. While Hubble sees the cosmos in visible and ultraviolet light, JWST operates in the infrared. The various wavelengths can reveal different aspects of stars and galaxies, so using the scopes in tandem will enable astronomers to study the heavens in even greater detail.
Bring our drones back home
Why not use it until it's completely broken?
I'm still LOLing at the Europeans this morning, most of whom are mourning the first of many nations to leave the EU. It's a matter of time before the rest of the EU fails, too. I'm so thankful for being a Canadian, because we are smarter and better than the Europeans and Americans. Unlike the United States and most of Europe, Canada is not a failed state.
This is probably the last useful thing the dumb fat Americans will ever do. The United States is a plague infecting the rest of the world by forcing its laws and culture on everyone. I appreciate the occasional useful thing to come from the Hubble but the United States is generally worthless. The EU should do the world a favor and nuke the hell out of the US. Go Europe! I'm proud to be a French citizen!
I'm still LOLing at the Europeans a full day later, most of whom are mourning the first of many nations to leave the EU. It's a matter of time before the rest of the EU fails, too. I'm so thankful for being a Canadian, because we are smarter and better than the Europeans and Americans. Unlike the United States and most of Europe, Canada is not a failed state.
Translation: This is gonna be an IR-only telescope because we saved $1000 by not adding a visible-light CCD.
In one hundred years people living will be wondering. They will be saying: in 2018 people were taking images using 3D, stereo, 1.5 Billion pixel gear. Gear lasted 30 years...
Yet in 2118, we are forced to get by with 13 centimeter, Apple 2118S screens with the Retina resolution, that needs to be replaced every two months.
Why not use it until it's completely broken?
This[1] article says almost $100 million per year for the Hubble. So they'll have to compare how much science they could get per year for $100 million if they spent it on other projects.
But as long as it's fairly functional I imagine they'll keep it up there.
It's not just about "how much science." NASA has had four missions that every child knows about, that have helped the agency and mankind a thousandfold more than the science we've gotten from them. That is because of the effect they have had at capturing the public imagination and inspiring people about science, about the quest for knowledge and exploration, about a hopeful future.
The Moon Landing.
Pioneer 10.
The Spirit and Opportunity Rovers.
Hubble.
The success of Hubble is not in its ability to generate science; it is in its ability to show the stars to millions of everyday people through the amazing pictures it takes. If it did that and we had learned nothing new from it to contribute to our science, it would still have been one of the most effective projects in the history of civilization.
Real lawyers write in C++
But you forgot the Fappening. Great pictures.