NASA touts aging Hubble telescope's successor

WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA unveiled Thursday a model of the massive space telescope that will replace the aging Hubble in 2013 and allow scientists to observe the formation of the first galaxies at the dawning of the universe.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Agency displayed in Washington a full-scale model of the James Webb (news, bio, voting record) Space Telescope, which scientists hope will peer back to the first stars after the "Big Bang" and the formation of solar systems capable of hosting life.

JWST, a joint project of the US, European and Canadian space agencies, will be three times bigger than Hubble, with a hexagonal mirror 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and five-layer sunshield the size of a tennis court

The probe being built by Northrop Grumman Corp. will include 10 new technologies, including an infrared camera and a spectrometer kept at an extremely low temperature for optimum performance. The telescope is expected to have a 10-year lifespan.

The model was put on display Thursday in front of Washington's National Air and Space Museum.

Launched 17 years ago, Hubble revolutionized astronomy by peering deep into the universe, beaming back dazzling images free of the distortions from Earth's atmosphere.

Orbiting 575 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, the Hubble has enabled scientists to better measure the age and origins of the universe, observe distant supernovas, and identify and study bodies in and outside the solar system.

While Hubble was able to peer back to one billion years after the Big Bang, the new telescope, with mirrors that will capture six times more light than its predecessor, will look even further into the origins of the universe, officials said.

"Clearly we need a much bigger telescope to go back much further in time to see the very birth of the universe," Edward Weiler, director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told a news conference.

Hubble, along with space telescopes Chandra and Spitzer, have shown that the universe is hiding many mysteries, but they are unable to solve them, said Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute near Washington.

"We cannot penetrate the darkness of the time when the first galaxies were born," Mountain said.

The current telescopes are also unable to provide answers about black holes and the enigmatic dark matter, he said.

With its more powerful mirrors, the new telescope "for the first time will send images from that dark age, high resolution pictures," he said.

The 4.5 billion dollar James Webb Space Telescope will be folded to fit inside a European Ariane V rocket in 2013 and will unfurl 1.5 million kilometers (0.93 million miles) from Earth.

NASA plans to launch a space shuttle mission next year to upgrade and maintain Hubble in order to keep it operational through 2013.

Without a repair mission, the telescope would shut down in 2009 or even earlier, dealing a blow to scientists who have relied on Hubble's images to better understand the universe.

James Webb Space Telescope

by Jean-Louis Santini