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The James Webb Space Telescope has passed the final mission analysis review
- baggy_trough 5y agoGoing to be amazing if this thing can actually unfurl, but I'm scared.
- tleilaxu 5y agoSame feelings here! Ever since it was announced I have been anxious about it all going to plan. Sometimes I put myself in the shoes of the engineers and controllers, and I can’t imagine how nerve wracking it must be, waiting and waiting! The thing could simply blow up on the launch pad, for goodness sake!
- holler 5y ago> The thing could simply blow up on the launch pad, for goodness sake! exactly, I’ve wondered why they don’t build e.g. 2 or 3 of them in tandem since it’d likely be cheaper/easier to do up front vs after the fact if things went wrong. They would then have the additional telescopes if things went right, offering even greater access.
- OrvalWintermute 5y agoYou're correct - building constellations is definitely much cheaper. For an observational/capability platform such as for DoD or NOAA, making a large number in a series makes sense. For a research platform (NASA/NSF) that same idea doesn't apply, since science objectives dominate the discussion.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoWith Mars landers, they do build two of them. When they have an issue with the one on Mars, they break out the one here on Earth and start debugging. When they have a solution that works, then they know what to do with the one on Mars. I don't know if that would work on telescopes, though - I suspect that the copy wouldn't have the full optics installed.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoSee my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27767223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27767223 The timelines on this kind of project are so long spares don't make sense vs trying again with a new and updated design.
- piquadrat 5y agoArianespace fat-fingering an Ariane 5 into the wrong orbit recently didn't exactly help with my anxiety... https://spacenews.com/bad-coordinates-led-ariane-5-astray-last-month/ https://spacenews.com/bad-coordinates-led-ariane-5-astray-la... (OTOH, I'm positive that particular issue won't reoccur)
- lisper 5y agoI used to work at JPL, and I was there when the sky-crane (the system currently used to land rovers on Mars) was first proposed back in the late 90s. I remember thinking to myself, "That is the craziest idea I have ever heard, there is no way that could possibly work." But it did. Never bet against NASA engineers. Sure, they have the odd high-profile screwup, but on the whole they are shockingly competent.
- jcims 5y agoDo you know if there is any test footage of that anywhere? That's, to me anyway, the second most amazing thing about the sky crane...that I can't find a single frame of it in operation on earth.
- lisper 5y agoSorry I have no idea.
- scrumbledober 5y agowould it have had enough thrust to work in earth gravity?
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoEarth physics are different from Mars physics. What works there wouldn't work here; can't just try it out and see if it works.
- jcims 5y agoSure the final mission configuration isn't exactly what they would test, but the differences in the sky crane maneuver on Mars and Earth would be relatively easy to factor in (ok, that might be an exaggeration, but its doable). There is a ton of control development that would need to be sorted out so they knew how to integrate it all. For example, I had heard that the primary indicator that the rover had touched down simply watching the throttle on the closed loop flight control system. When it throttled down it meant the rockets were no longer suspending the weight of the rover. If true, I would think you would want to test that quite a bit... FWIW they tested missile defense 'kill vehicles' on the ground and they will operate at or near orbital velocity in space. The main 'hover thruster' would likely be completely unnecessary in a live exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMU6l6GsdM
- detritus 5y agoI don't know why, but I've had this gut-wrenching feeling for a couple of years now that Something Terrible is going to happen to this before it gets into position at L2. I really hope not, obviously, but this seems like an All Your Eggs In One Basket lesson in the making. We need to commodify this tech, make them somewhat disposable, and sent oodles of them up on Starships.
- cnlevy 5y agoUsing 3 COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) components with 90% reliability can ensure 99.9% redundancy instead of having a Unique very reliable and even costlier 99.9% custom component can really lower costs. But it can happen only if mass is not a constraint. From Casey Handmer's blog: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/sls-what-now/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/03/04/sls-what-now/ The Perseverance Mars rover cost $2.4 billion, which works out to a few thousand salaries for just under a decade. Thousands of people are needed to build this rover because landing stuff on Mars is so hard that subsystem masses must be tracked to a tenth of a gram, on a system that weighs a tonne. The whole thing is meticulously handcrafted from custom silicon, PCBs, titanium tubes, motors, cameras, and other awe-inspiring instruments. Starship will be able to land 100 of them per flight. Now what? How can NASA feed a team that makes one feather light rover per decade for a billion dollars if the demand just jumped by a factor of a thousand and the unit cost fell by the same amount? Set up a production line? Work out how to make them with a team of ten? Build one every two weeks?
- CamperBob2 5y agoThey should put that team to work on next-generation tech, the stuff that's not yet a commodity. They can start working on habitat construction materials and hardware, for instance. Although it is interesting to consider that we've put a lot of expense into optimizing payloads that, in retrospect, would have been smarter to put into better launch vehicles. SpaceX probably isn't going to spend $2 billion developing Starship (even if Boeing would have.)
- meepmorp 5y ago
- bpodgursky 5y agoI almost want the unfurling to get stuck, just b/c SpaceX launching a manned Starship out to a LaGrange point to hotfix it would be super cool.
- bronson 5y agoFly out there, spacewalk over, give it a little jiggle, looks good, fly home. It would be like driving six hours to push a power button, but epic.
- dirtyid 5y agoJust want launch to be over so I don't have to deal with JW news anxiety anymore.
- tectonic 5y agoSuch an exciting, and high stakes, and dramatically late and over-budget mission.
- Goety 5y agoI am so amped for this telescope. I hope it exceeds my expectations. It also looks like this location will be quite crowded in the future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_points#L2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_po...
- tomschlick 5y agoGovernment red tape and contracting at its finest Edit: Downvotes with no comments as to why... This thing is 24 years in development and 20x over budget. If thats not a failure of government contracting, budgeting, etc then idk what is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cost_and_schedule_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos... - Obviously the platform will be cool once they get it launched, but until then its just a money pit.
- systemvoltage 5y agoAnother way to put it is that it’s a jobs program. Edit: what’s with the downvotes? I would like to understand what the disagreement is here. Any gov program can be split up into two parts. One, the actual cost as dictated by the market economy, and second, the additional costs for delays, bureaucracy, etc which usually tends to be multiples of the actual costs. This money goes into paying salaries without actually making any progress. Hence the jobs program. What’s there to disagree here? Is this argument somehow belonging to a particular political spectrum? Downvotes are fine but I’d like to gain some understanding of where my thoughts are not aligned with you. Please explain your position.
- slownews45 5y agoDoes anyone remember the initial proposals for this. The cost was supposed to be $500M. At most something like $1B. Given this is standard govt contracting - I'm sure it's come out much higher.
- Jabbles 5y agoHere is a nice table with the history of the budget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cost_and_schedule_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos...
- slownews45 5y agoClicking through we get this "JWST is now estimated to cost approximately $9.7 billion and launch in October 2021, which represents cost growth of 95 percent and 88 months of schedule delays since the project’s cost and schedule baselines were first established in 2009." So around $10B. Amazing.
- elihu 5y agoI wonder what the marginal cost would be to build a second one?
- swarnie_ 5y agoFact boy covered it a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CowU0QK0Pjs&ab_channel=Megaprojects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CowU0QK0Pjs&ab_channel=Megap... From what i remember this project has been running since around the time of Hubble Still.... Can't wait for it to get up there, money and time well spent!
- slownews45 5y agoThat's pretty amazing. A financial black hole. A cool project, but if you think of the thousands of folks who didn't get funding so this thing could gobble everything up - these projects really become crazy budget wise (SLS did the same path). I wish they would do pay for performance deals. We'll give you $4B if you put a telescope in space of X size that meets some basic specs. If you look at commercial side, space imaging (earth facing) has just exploded and the cost side has gotten very very good. So it's clear you can get optics and sensing into space for a lot less.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 908B64B197 5y agoHere's the official release from the launch partner [0](Arianeespace and the Eeuropean Space Agency are providing the launch on an Ariane V rocket). They are the ones responsible for that milestone of the project (NASA and JPL already completed manufacturing of the spacecraft). Exciting news! https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_passes_key_launch_clearance_review https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/W...
- 0xF57A 5y agoI was watching a presentation given by the MGT project manager at cal tech and he mentioned that the MGT has a lower diffraction limit than the JWST. I think “diffraction limit” was the term he used, I don’t remember. The idea was that the images are supposed to be sharper. I was very confused about that. Why build JWST if MGT is going to maker cleaner images?
- foota 5y agoI believe there are some kinds of photography that can only be done outside the atmosphere. Edit: see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope, particularly comparison with other telescopes. Seems the primary reason is for infrared photography.
- jjoonathan 5y agoMaybe MGT isn't limited by diffraction but rather by atmospheric distortion (or residual distortion, because presumably they do what they can to correct it)? Just a guess, I'm not an astronomer.
- bronson 5y agoMGT is limited to the light that filters through the atmosphere. JWST will be tuned to longer wavelengths (redshifted older objects) that can only be seen in cold space.
- wolverine876 5y ago> JWST will be tuned to longer wavelengths (redshifted older objects) that can only be seen in cold space. As I understand it: We're placing it at L2 specifically for that reason, to isolate it from other radiation.
- jcims 5y agoI'm just a rube but in general there are two issues: 1 - the atmosphere distorts and filters out a lot of light in various wavelengths. MGT likely has better resolution, but only for light that reaches it. 2 - JWST is primarily for infrared. Given blackbody radiation of the equipment itself can create a bunch of noise there, it's important to keep the equipment as cool as possible.
- fnord77 5y agowhat's the biggest risk? rocket failure during takeoff or telescope malfunction?
- xeromal 5y agoI believe the unfurling of the solar panels is one of the tricky parts.
- FranOntanaya 5y agoMost rockets these days are pretty reliable. Ariane 5 only had one partial failure in 20 years I believe.
- RaiausderDose 5y agoAriane 5 rockets have accumulated 109 launches since 1996, 104 of which were successful, yielding a 95.4% success rate. Between April 2003 and December 2017, Ariane 5 flew 82 consecutive missions without failure, but the rocket suffered a partial failure in January 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5
- topspin 5y agoThere are several big risks. It's impossible to rank them in a credible way. Obviously there are all the usual launch risks. The cryogenics system has had a lot of development problems. The deployment is staggeringly complex and involves components that are not known for their robustness. Finally there is no repair option; one critical things goes wrong or is found to be misdesigned and that's it.
- sonograph 5y agoI remember getting excited about this telescope a decade ago. I haven't heard of it since; but I thought it's budget was cut and it was over. I'm excited NASA is finally going to get it up in space!
- callesgg 5y agoI bet it will fail to deploy properly. But I hope not.
- pkaye 5y agoActually the budget was overrun quite a bit. I think it will cost $10B at this point.
- keanebean86 5y ago$9.5 billion over is pocket change! If you adjust for inflation $10 billion is only $7.7 billion in 2007 dollars. Assuming the telescope works I can live with it being expensive.
- mtdewcmu 5y agoUnlike the F-35, I think the taxpayers are getting their money's worth.
- RaiausderDose 5y agoplease don't blow up and deploy successful in space
- canadianfella 5y agoPunctuation has a purpose.
- abhiminator 5y agoOn a related note, I highly, highly recommend watching this well-made documentary on JWST, released around 3 and a half years ago -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLD9LKq0u9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLD9LKq0u9E This documentary was produced by Northrop Grumman Corporation -- the builders of JWST under a NASA contract.
- wolverine876 5y ago> This documentary was produced by Northrop Grumman Corporation -- the builders of JWST under a NASA contract. Is it promotional material?
- gccs 5y agoPropaganda
- vimacs2 5y agoConsidering that they themselves made the telescope, do you consider all forms of self expression propoganda?
- wolverine876 5y ago> self expression This isn't art. And yes, I don't trust corporate press releases (though I'm not sure "propaganda" is the right term); do you?
- seb1204 5y agoI agree that one needs to be critical or corporate videos. I've watched the video and it is appealing to feelings and has very little technical details. It impresses by outlining the size and some of the complexity but nothing more. It does not give dates, cost or other numbers. I liked it but would like a much more technical documentation too.
- mongol 5y agoWhat is it hoped this can see? Is there some specific hypothesis this telescope was built to confirm?
- redisman 5y agoThe oldest galaxies that have red shifted off the spectrum and are only visible with this. You can’t do IR telescoping except at L2 because earth is giving off its own IR reflection or radiation or something like that
- SiempreViernes 5y agoHopefully it'll tell us about the period of reionisation, when the light of the first galaxies made the universe transparent again.
- doctoboggan 5y agoIt should be able to detect the atmospheric makeup of expo planets (via spectroscopy during a transition). This will let scientists search for signs of life on other planets.
- jl6 5y agoIf the JWST survives launch but has a subsequent mechanical problem that prevents it deploying properly (and it’s the kind of problem that would have been fixable on Hubble, using a shuttle mission) would it be feasible to mount a robotic rescue mission to chase it down and remote-hands it back to life? For less than the cost of just launching another JWST?
- nabla9 5y agoThe JWST will not orbit Earth. It will be located near the second Lagrange point (L2) over 1,500,000 km away (The Moon is just 405,000 km from the Earth). Space Shuttle could not have reached it.
- wyldfire 5y agoHow long can it stay stable at that point? Does it have thrusters to keep a station there? If so, how long is the fuel for them provisioned for? Does use of the thrusters impact the sensors that the telescope uses?
- pageandrew 5y agoThe orbit needs to be actively maintained. The telescope was designed for a 5.5 year mission, but NASA says it could last up to 10.5 years with proper fuel management. It has two different types of thrusters under the "Propulsion Subsystem". > One kind is called "Secondary Combustion Augmented Thrusters" (SCAT), and they are used for orbit correction (like applied changes in velocity for each maneuver the spacecraft makes and also for orbit station-keeping). The SCATs are bi-propellant thrusters, using hydrazine (N2H4) and dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4) as fuel and oxidizer, respectively. > The other kind of thruster on Webb is called a MRE-1, or mono-propellant rocket engine, since it only uses hydrazine. There are eight MRE-1s on Webb, and they are used for attitude control and momentum unloading of the reaction wheels Ref: https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-hardware/jwst-spacecraft-bus/jwst-propulsion https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-observatory-hardware/jwst-s...
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
- thangalin 5y agoTime-lapse video of it opening (~1:20): https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57078657 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57078657
- endymi0n 5y agoWhile it‘s awesome to finally see the JWST finally come to close to launch after all those years, now it‘s a close race between it and SpaceX Starship that could have taken the 6.5 meter mirror up to space in one whole piece in its 9m diameter belly rather than having to do all the miraculous origami that took two decades to develop in the first place…
- minikites 5y agoI wouldn't trust any payload on a SpaceX ship given their track record.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoThat's how space travel development works. It doesn't take off; it crashes; it explodes; it fails to land; it works. From then on pretty much, it works.
- wolverine876 5y agoWhat is that based on? How do you distinguish launch systems that just don't work well? Everything works in the end? That would make engineering much easier and less stressful!
- lazide 5y agoI’m unaware of any launch system that gets many tries at failures - it either gets what needs to be done relatively quickly or it gets cancelled. The number of tries you get is usually single digits. Everyone fails a few times at a minimum.
- Me1000 5y agoThe Falcon 9 has had 126 missions so far and only 2 of those were failures. It's not a perfect record, but it's pretty decent. And presumably SpaceX has learned from those failures. Compare that to the Ariane 5 rockets (which will actually be launching the James Web Space Telescope) which has had 109 launches, and 5 of them ended in failure. I'm just going to assume you're referring to Starship's various explosions. It's far too early in the Starship development cycle to draw any kind of conclusions about it's reliability. Starship is a prototype. It's a completely new vehicle with completely new engines, and they're building it with the expectation that the early versions are going to blow up. It's like saying Falcon 9 is unreliable because their early "grasshopper" prototype (for testing landing) exploded and at times. Also probably a good idea to note that these explosions all happened during their landing attempt, so in theory any payload onboard would have already been deployed. It's just the vehicle that would be lost. Of course they're still so early in the development cycle that Starship hasn't even attempted an orbital flight yet. I get that it's weird watching these very early prototypes blow up so spectacularly and publicly, but that's the development model SpaceX has chosen. And we're not used to watching rockets being built and tested so out in the open. Personally I think it's exciting watching the progress they're making.
- 1970-01-01 5y agoIt's pretty close to launch, but it still feels like it's not going to be ready for a few more years!
- cromwellian 5y agoI feel like this is an all-eggs-in-one-basket mission. If it fails to launch, we have nothing. Why not build many JWSTs, surely the cost per unit would go down, and launch more than one?
- wolverine876 5y ago> surely the cost per unit would go down, and launch more than one? Surely? They didn't build a JWST factory. It might go up, as people with specialized skills or knowledge have moved on.
- cromwellian 5y agoYes, surely. Most of the cost was in R&D and in the mirror manufacturing. They've been designing and manufacturing it for 20 years. Per-unit costs would go down. Take the mirror, it's made of segments, the facility used to produce those segments certainly would benefit from scaling up production. They'd get better at fabbing them over time, increasing yields, reducing costs. What NASA is doing is building the equivalent of a $10 billion fab to produce one chip. Space telescopes could be continually produced on a schedule, and retired on a schedule, with constant improvement. Look at RS-25 engines vs Raptor engines in terms of costs to produce one.
- wolverine876 5y agoIncreasing production from 1 unit to 2 doesn't necessarily reduce costs. Due to demand and limited supply, for example, some prices increase. We know almost nothing about this thing. It's very speculative to say the cost would decrease. Also, how many space telescopes of this variety do we need? All that said, it would be interesting to see NASA research on mass producing the more common components of its 'product line'. It does it for rockets, of course, but computers? Solar panels? Mars rover components? I'm sure it's been considered and I expect it's done in ways I'm not aware of.
- bumby 5y agoCertainly a lot of the cost of the project is R&D, but most people would be shocked by how much of aerospace project budgets are driven by quality. E.g., a bolt costs $200 not because it has to go through a new R&D cycle, but because it needs a chain-of-custody, inspections, metal coupons stored, etc. There's also a huge amount of political risk for a government entity. Politicians will be reluctant to fund another JWST if the first one fails because many will fight it as a waste of money, and the previous failure just bolsters the JWST-opponent's position.
- cnlevy 5y agoLooks like it just gave Elon Musk some ideas https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/ofqm8o/elon_musk_using_starship_itself_as_structure_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/ofqm8o/elon_musk_us...
- abacadaba 5y agogodspeed jwst team! find me an alienz!
- sghiassy 5y agoOMFG!!!! I’m so excited… let’s go!!!!!!!
- spaetzleesser 5y agoWhen I look at project management for the small projects (1-20 people) I am working on I always wonder how projects of such a complexity are managed. It must be freakishly difficult to coordinate all the pieces. The people working on this will also have several stressful months ahead of them. From launch to full deployment so many things can go wrong and there is nothing that can be done when something fails.
- Ronson 5y agoI seen a video on this today, (megaprojects) and I thought the same thing and wondered how deep it goes. Like something about the sun shield being the width of a human hair, someone put the idea forward, something about how many motors are involved in unpacking, someone put the idea forward. All the way to the Ariane rocket. Is for example, the Ariane rocket so good that the person in charge is sipping tea and eating biscuits the night before launch, or is that person biting their nails to the bone hoping that it doesn't go wrong in some way with a 10 billion payload on board?
- 7373737373 5y agoI wonder the same for large (especially international) companies, government bureaucracies or other organizations. With thousands of employees and branches in different locations, it must be impossible to get a full understanding of the state of the system.
- auto 5y agoSame, makes you wonder how much slack/tolerance is built into these systems and organizations, and whether that comes in the form of manpower, process, etc. and whether or not it’s planned for, or just naturally evolves in large enough instances.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoThis is what Systems Engineers do. There's no magic bullet, but the basic process is lots and lots of documents. Much of what NASA does is published openly so you can get a feel for what some of these document types are like. The wiki page gives a decent summary. Building a model for the system is indeed a big part of the challenge. These days it's increasingly done as a fully detailed software simulation. The big CAD packages have specific functionality for this now. For example SpaceX runs on Siemens NX, and you can wade through their marketing speak to get some idea of how it works. CATIA is also popular with aerospace companies, and Autocad's products with architecture.
- naikrovek 5y agoI really hope this isn't a "MAKE IT PASS, OR ELSE" situation. this telescope doesn't deserve any functionality setbacks in exchange for more schedule setbacks. a telescope made late because of fixes is a fully working telescope. a prematurely launched telescope is broken for its entire service life.
- irjustin 5y agoNo, they know what's at stake. That's why it's been delayed... and delayed... and delayed... The question we're all biting our nails for is - Will it work?
- austincheney 5y agoThe Hubble was launched broken. The mirror had a precision defect and produced blurry photos. A team had to go up and manually correct the focus. https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-flaw https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-flaw
- julienchastang 5y agoA post launch fix of this type will not be possible for JWST due to the solar (not Earth) orbit of the instrument.
- redisman 5y agoCan’t do that with this orbit
- parksy 5y agoI fully agree, my first gut reaction every time I read an update about the JWST is fear that something will go wrong. I hope they take all the time needed to get it right. I do also wonder if interactions with air / moisture / dust will degrade the components faster than they would wear out in space, the longer it's here on Earth? I'm guessing this is all accounted for too, just crazy to think of all the variables at play in the success of a project like this.
- bane 5y agoIt's my personal belief that these massive R&D space telescope programs are nearing their end. Computational approaches among multiple sensors, combined with good 'ol factory mass manufacturing powered by low-cost reusable launch technology allows for the money spent on one-shot programs like this to be spent and allocated in radical different ways. Instead of building one huge short life-span spacecraft, why not launch hundreds or thousands of lower cost, less capable birds incrementally? You can start with a small "first light" capable instrument with a dozen or so spacecraft, then over time and more launches put up more and more capability and decommission failed or low capability pieces. Use some computational methods to combine the sensor collection from dozens, hundreds, or thousands of these kinds of spacecraft and you could end up with planet sized instruments pretty efficiently. By eliminating lots of the hard engineering for the massive instruments (like serviceability, difficult to make massive mirrors, etc) you can build even better instruments that are generational and relatively inexpensive. You get a more flexible funding story as well, e.g. fund at maintenance levels during difficult economic times and fund at larger amounts during boom times with matching launch schedules. Tasking the fleet could be more dynamic as well, with different researchers able to reserve different percentages of a huge fleet for their specific experiments and needs -- e.g. reserve a hundred spacecraft for a long dwell "deep field" type observation, or reserve thousands for planetary imaging in a nearby solar system. I know there are naysayers about this who think it's improbable. I urge those to think about the Starlink fleet, which went from zero birds in the air in 2015 to over 1500 spacecraft today. Now instead of radio antenna, what if they had imaging sensors and were turned to face out? SpaceX certainly didn't spend anywhere near what JWST ran as a program to reach this point and the development time has been a fraction so far.
- nine_k 5y agoAs already said, the problem is in coordination of multiple telescopes in spacetime. It might be better to build one giant telescope piecemeal, by adding more and more small mirrors. A similar approach is taken by several terrestrial telescopes. It would still be very interesting to have a few space telescopes distributed across the Solar system, much wider than the Earth orbit. It could give a sort of stereoscopic picture of closest star systems, even though "simultaneous" observation would be ill-defined for them.
- jamesmontalvo3 5y agoNice. On track to beat https://xkcd.com/2014/ https://xkcd.com/2014/
- sidcool 5y agoThis is one of the most daring missions. In case of any malfunction there will be no chance of reparing. Everything has to go right