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After several years of planning and no shortage of financial anxiety, construction has officially started on the Extremely Large Telescope. Contractors are now building the main structure and dome of the Chile-based observer ahead of its initial service in 2024. That's a long time to wait, but this is no mean feat. With a 43-yard aperture, this promises to be the world's largest optical telescope for sometime, even compared to future or in-limbo projects like the Thirty Meter Telescope. Those gigantic dimensions will help it capture far more light, giving astronomers the chance to spot particularly distant galaxies, find small planets and capture more details of larger planets.
The ELT's full capabilities won't come until sometime after 2024, when the ESO starts a second construction phase. It could easily be another few years after that before the telescope lives up to its expectations.
Source: Engadget
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @09:57PM (13 children)
It would be impressive if this monster can reach diffraction limited resolution. James Webb will have to run for his money.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 29 2017, @10:08PM (11 children)
JWST should be collecting data starting in November 2018. The telescope can only last 5-10 years due to the cooling needed, and it isn't expected to be serviced by SLS. So it could be dead as early as 2023. The Thirty Meter Telescope was supposed to go up by 2022, and that was before construction in Hawaii was cancelled. So the two telescopes won't be competing for very long.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 29 2017, @10:13PM (5 children)
No option to resupply the cooling system?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday May 29 2017, @10:45PM (4 children)
https://jwst.nasa.gov/faq.html#serviceable [nasa.gov]
Given all the money we have spent on this thing, I think it would be nice to have a robotic craft come in, make repairs, and replace the coolant, even if this had to be done a decade after the telescope "dies". I'm not sure if the sensors are ruined once the coolant runs out.
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(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday May 29 2017, @11:20PM (3 children)
Yet another example of budget contrained short-sightedness from NASA, I guess... You have to wonder if those studies even included the possibility of having someone like SpaceX give it a go, or if they just assumed it would have to be an Atlas or SLS based launch of a home-grown service module?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @11:41PM
perhaps there just isnt any Congressional patronage ro get behind said efforts. the Usual Suspects would probably eventually put another telescope out there. So theres the main damper right there. And not too hard for their "it's too hard" whispers to keep those patrons from considering it, especially if it's not to be done by the Usual Suspects.
Funny if China & Russia, perhaps with ESO help, decide to risk it. China & Russia probably have the blue prints for it already...
but itll probably still be semi-useful as long as its reaction wheel units continue to work, like the Hershel or Kepler 'scopes were.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:07AM
In fact, isn't the X-37B's primary mission to service satellites (or do covert things to them)?
I think people have seen the value of the Hubble servicing missions, and if the JWST can be fixed up in the late 2020s or 2030s for under $500 million, it will get done. If a robot has to make the repairs rather than a human, so be it.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:34AM
Or they want to be sure that it's fully stops working so they can ask for "please please we must have another telescope up there because right now we have NONE!". And so they money come to rescue the acute situation.
Makes me also wonder what the cost of a new space telescope will be when the current one reaches its end of life. If the cost of a service mission gets too high in comparison with sending up a new one and taking into account new capabilities it might just be that it pays off anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:05AM (4 children)
Is it the cooling or the fuel? The whole point of that massive sunshade, that will make it a pig to slew onto new targets, is to make it possible to do all the cooling needed with an active refrigeration system ( https://jwst.nasa.gov/cryocooler.html [nasa.gov] ). Even if it did heat up, as WISE and Spitzer have shown, its HgCdTe detectors would run just fine. The problem is that the first three Lagrange points aren't stable, so you need station keeping thrusters to avoid slipping away into orbit around the Earth or Sun.
Even if JWST isn't technically "servicable", I could see a robotic mission that goes out, grabs on to it, and provides station keeping services. It would be good practice for asteroid capture missions. Then, at least, it could be run until something breaks, like Kepler.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:34AM (2 children)
I was sure it was the coolant that was the big deal, but the FAQ mentions fuel as well.
It seems like they are definitely expecting it to last 10 years or even a little longer, which is good news.
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @01:49AM (1 child)
The cooler is closed-cycle. But L2 orbits need fuel to maintain.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 30 2017, @07:03PM
Yes, ESA says that's true for L2:
-- http://sci.esa.int/herschel/34699-orbit-navigation/ [esa.int]
Wikipedia says without a citation:
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:56AM
I wonder if one could buy it? Someone with enough cash could make use of a telescope already in space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @02:34PM
James Webb is infrared. Something you can't really get down on the planet.