Best Telescope:Телескоп Гершель,OWL, JWST, greatest views

[Chilik]

В Китае начаты работы по выравниванию площадки для размещения будущего крупнейшего в мире радиотелескопа с апертурой 500 метров ...

Что ровно на 100 метров меньше, чем апертура советского РАТАН-600.
Про иркутский солнечный радиотелескоп или VLBA даже и вспоминать не хочется.
Кстати, там на самом деле важнейшим параметром для распальцовки является рабочая длина волны, но по ссылке этого не увидел. Если он миллиметровый - то круть немеряная.

[Старый]

Что ровно на 100 метров меньше, чем апертура советского РАТАН-600.

Вы тот РАТАН-600 видели?

[Космос-3794]

Главное преимущество FAST - его чувствительность. Посчитайте площадь рефлектора и сравните с VLBA (десять 25-метровых тарелок) или РАТАН.
Благодаря сервомоторам на каждой панели он имеет перенастраиваемый фокус и за счет этого более широкую полосу обзора 40 град (Аресибо -20 град.). Макс. частота 3 МГц,  на 1-м этапе, на 2-м этапе - 8 МГц. (Аресибо - до 10 МГц).

http://www.ursi.org/proceedings/procGA08/papers/J01bp2.pdf

[Имxотеп]

Макс. частота 3 МГц,  на 1-м этапе, на 2-м этапе - 8 МГц. (Аресибо - до 10 МГц).

[Космос-3794]

ГГц конечно...  :oops:

[hecata]

Даааа, такой проект и всего 100 млн долларов, это круто.

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110225-array-deterioration-jwst.html

Fri, 25 February, 2011
Detector Array Deterioration Poses New Problem for JWST[/size]
By Amy Svitak

       WASHINGTON — NASA is investigating a detector problem common to three primary instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that could get worse with time as a planned 2014 launch date for the overbudget flagship-class astronomy mission slips further into the future.

    NASA chartered a Failure Review Board Feb. 7 to assess the problem, which affects detector arrays made by Teledyne Imaging Sensors of Camarillo, Calif., for JWST's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and Fine Guidance Sensor-Tunable Filter Imager.

    Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam, the telescope's primary imager, said tests conducted over the past two years on five long-wavelength detector arrays revealed so-called hot pixels that degrade the quality of images JWST is designed to capture. That is disappointing news for a telescope expected to cost more than $5 billion — and possibly much more, according to the findings of an independent review conducted last year. But the real problem, Rieke said, is that the pixel degradation appears to be growing worse with time.

    "If this were all that might happen, this would not be an issue," she wrote in a Feb. 21 e-mail. "But if the array continues to degrade with time until launch, too many pixels would be out of spec."

    Two years ago when Rieke's NIRCam team tested the detector arrays at the University of Arizona in Tucson, the hot-pixel problem was evident, yet remained well within the limits set by JWST's stringent performance requirements. But in December, as the team was readying a lone detector for integration into the NIRCam instrument at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif., final performance test data indicated the problem had worsened.

    "Much to our horror, the test revealed that there are now about 2 [percent] of the pixels that are out of spec rather than the initial 0.5 [percent]," Rieke told Space News, adding that a subsequent test in January showed four out of five of the NIRCam's long-wavelength detector arrays were affected.

    But Rieke said the problem is not isolated to the NIRCam detector arrays. Teledyne-built detectors designed for the NIRSpec instrument, developed by Astrium GmbH of Germany, and the Fine Guidance Sensor-Tunable Filter Imager, in development by the Canadian Space Agency, are affected as well, she said.

    "The problem we are having is that just sitting on the shelf under controlled conditions, some initially good pixels went bad this way," she said, explaining that the technology used to build the infrared detector arrays involves the same solid-state physics as pixels used to capture images in digital cameras, in which hot pixels fail to yield data. "No one would want to buy a digital camera that developed bad pixels just sitting around!"

    Rieke said the Failure Review Board, which is expected to complete work in April, hopes to identify exactly what is causing the degradation and whether it might be reversible.

    "It is certainly a serious problem because we do not understand it today," she said.

    Led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., JWST is an infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter foldable mirror and a deployable sunshield the size of a tennis court. Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems of Redondo Beach, Calif., is prime contractor.

    An Ariane 5 rocket provided by the European Space Agency is slated to launch the observatory to the second Lagrange point — a gravitationally stable spot 1.5 million kilometers from Earth — in June 2014. However, an independent review team convened last year found the estimated $5 billion telescope to be at least $1.5 billion over budget and 15 months behind schedule. The panel urged NASA to furnish $500 million in additional funding in both 2011 and 2012 or risk further slips to the launch delay.

    Rick Howard, JWST program director, said Feb. 14 that the additional money is not likely to materialize, and that JWST's launch date could slip well into 2016 as a result. He said continued launch delays could pose a problem for JWST's instruments, including the detector arrays.

    "As you get further and further out with [the launch date], it really raises questions about how far down the [integration and test] process you go for the instruments ... and how long you have to store all that before you actually launch," he told the NASA Advisory Council's astrophysics subcommittee during a Feb. 16 public meeting here. "And that just makes everybody even more nervous about this problem than anything else."

    Howard said NASA has considered scrapping the existing detectors and buying new ones prior to JWST's launch.

    "We have had discussions about why not just go off and have another lot of detectors made up, and this is probably what we may do. But we need to find out what the root cause is rather than just replicate the problem that we now have two years from now," he said. "But that is one of the options."

    Rieke said having to buy new detectors just prior to launch would be a worst-case solution to the pixel degradation plaguing JWST's sensors.

    "I have a lot of hope that we will find a simpler solution," she said.

[Salo]

http://www.cybersecurity.ru/space/116244.html

Европа вложит около 500 млн евро в исследования экзопланет[/size]

(19:26) 25.02.2011

Европейское космическое агентство сегодня поддержало новую космическую миссию стоимостью 400 млн британских фунтов, направленную на исследования планет, расположенных за пределами Солнечной Системы. Руководить данным проектом будет Университетский колледж в Лондоне. Главной задачей проекта является поиск планет, похожих на Землю, где могла бы быть жизнь.

В рамках проекта планируется создать и вывести на околоземную орбиту новый космический 1,2-метровый телескоп Echo (Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory), который будет поставлять данные для более чем сотни европейских научных организаций. Новинка сможет проводить спектроскопический анализ атмосферы потенциальных экзопланет, размеры которых варьируются от газовых гигантов, сопоставимых с Юпитером, до небольших планет, похожих на нашу.

Ожидается, что телескоп должен быть запущен на орбиту в 2020-2022 годах. В ЕКА говорят, что аппарат, во-первых, займется поиском планет в так называемых обитаемых зонах, а во-вторых, будет исследовать атмосферу таких планет. В задачу аппарата войдет поиск ключевых биомаркеров, которые присутствуют на Земле. Аппарат займется поиском паров воды, поиском озона в атмосфере и углекислого газа на планетах.

Аппарат Echo был выбран из примерно 50 аналогичных научных предложений, выдвинутых европейскими учеными.

[Salo]

http://www.open.ac.uk/science/physics/about-the-department/news.php?article_id=20619

26th January 2011
Three OU space missions selected for study by ESA for a 2022 launch[/size]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected 14 space mission concepts (out of 47 submitted from the International Community) to go forward for further study for a Medium-size mission launch in 2022. Three of these missions with OU involvement are: the Exoplanet Missions, NEAT (Nearby Earth Astrometric Telescope) and EChO (Exoplanet Characterisation Observatory); and the European Venus Explorer (EVE).

CEPSAR's Professor Glenn White from The Department of Physics & Astronomy, a Science Working Team Member and co-proposer of both Exoplanet missions, said "Europe has placed a high priority of the characterization and measurement planets orbiting other stars, and developing the technological capabilities to tell us whether life may have gained a foothold on their surfaces. We are truly on the threshold of answering fundamental questions about the origins of life in the Universe".

CEPSAR's Dr Stephen Lewis, also from the Department of Physics & Astronomy, and a co-proposer of EVE adds "Terrestrial planets are central to questions about the formation of life. The three such planets in our solar system - Earth, Mars, and Venus - are key to our understanding of habitability everywhere, including in other planetary systems".

EChO is a 1.2 m space telescope with visible, near- and mid-infrared spectrographs which will measure the atmospheres of giant and terrestrial exoplanets transiting their parent star. EChO will study planets in the habitable zones of late type stars in the solar neighborhood that have a planetary architecture like that of our Solar System, or alternative planetary systems made of Earth mass planets. EChO will also examine the possibility that life may have formed in these other planetary systems. Since the detection of the first extra¬solar planet – or 'exo¬planet' in 1992, devel¬oping tech¬niques have revealed the pres¬ence of almost 500 more. Our galaxy appears to enjoy a rich abun¬dance of worlds on which life might be detected – EChO's science focus will be to measure the atmospheric conditions of exoplanets, as a way of understanding whether life processes could have gained a foothold in the past, or may develop in the future.

NEAT is a novel concept to use high precision astrometric measurements (the accurate measurement of the positions of stars two orders of magnitude more sensitive than the best currently achieved from the Earth) to detect and characterise planetary systems in the Habitable zones of nearby stars. The main scientific goal of the NEAT mission is to search exoplanets down to a limit of about half Earth mass around a volume limited sample of several hundred nearby stars. This survey would provide the actual planetary masses, the full characterization of the orbits including their inclination, and all the components of the planetary system down to that mass limit. The mission will use a 1 metre diameter off-axis parabolic telescope

EVE consists of a balloon probe, to be flown in the atmosphere of Venus, which aims to understand the evolution of Venus and its climate, with relevance to terrestrial planets everywhere. ESA's Venus Express has been a highly successful mission to Venus, but many questions cannot be addressed by orbital measurements alone, including issues of chemical evolution, gas isotopic ratios, cloud chemistry, small and large scale atmospheric dynamics, the role of clouds in radiative balance and the electrical and magnetic environment at cloud-level. The EVE balloon is designed to last at least ten days, much longer than previous Russian in situ missions to Venus, and enough to make at least one circumnagivation of the planet in the strong cloud-top winds.

These missions continue the Open University's long tradition and leading position in space astronomy and planetary science, which includes involvement in the currently flying ESA, NASA and Japanese Space agency missions AKARI, HERSCHEL, PLANCK, STEREO, Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and in the planning for the next generation of major international space missions that may include GAIA, PLATO, FIRI, SAFARI, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and the ExoMars lander.

Notes: The NEAT Consortium of 35 Institutions from 12 European Countries and the USA is led by The Institut de Plan

[ZOOR]

Да, вот как раз о последнем этапе конкурса конкурентов было -  http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=716336#716336

ИМХО для меня выбор неочевиден. Причина - неоднозначность толкования результатов миссии.
Найдут углекислый газ - это не доказывает наличия жизни - и кто сказал что она только на углероде цветет?
Не найдут - плохо искали - опять ничего не доказывает.

Почему MarcoPolo-R откинули - понятно. Посмотрев на мечения с Хаябусой, нашим Ф-Г, имея ввиду вторую Хаябусу ...

Почему LOFT и особенно STE-QUEST - непонятно. Может С-РГ и Смарт-2 испугались?

[Космос-3794]

Почему MarcoPolo-R откинули - понятно. Посмотрев на мечения с Хаябусой, нашим Ф-Г, имея ввиду вторую Хаябусу ...
Почему LOFT и особенно STE-QUEST - непонятно. Может С-РГ и Смарт-2 испугались?

А почему Вы решили что что-то "откинули"?
Ведь даже по кандидатам для миссий М1 и М2 окончательное решение будет принято в конце года. А тут М3 - "стрижка только началась"...

[ronatu]

Даааа, такой проект и всего 100 млн долларов, это круто.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/71677/name/Funding_gap

It will be the largest telescope ever launched into space, with a mirror that has about six times the light collecting area of Hubble's. When the James Webb Space Telescope flies later this decade, its unparalleled infrared vision will record the flickers of the first stars and galaxies to light up the universe, in a mission that promises to rewrite astronomy textbooks. But for now, the 6.5-ton observatory has become a financial albatross for NASA.

An independent investigative panel reported in November that the telescope, known by the acronym JWST, is running a minimum of $1.4 billion over budget (SN Online: 11/11/10). That overrun, which would bring the total cost of building the telescope to at least $6.5 billion, may lead to the cancellation of another highly touted NASA mission to probe the nature of dark energy and extrasolar planets..........

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/71607/title/Star_Cents

[Salo]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1104/13jwst/

Budget pessimism may drive JWST launch date to 2018[/size]
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: April 13, 2011

Struggling to match schedules with bleak funding realities, NASA and contractor officials say launch of the troubled James Webb Space Telescope could be delayed to 2018, four years later than the date NASA publicly pronounced last fall.


Artist's concept of the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA
 
Testifying before a U.S. Senate subcommittee Monday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said the agency is still completing a bottoms-up assessment of the next-generation space observatory before announcing a specific launch readiness date and cost projections.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., asked Bolden how much money is needed to put JWST back on track, saying lawmakers need realistic numbers to incorporate into the federal budget process.

Mikulski is the chair of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"We honestly do not think that we need money in fiscal '11 that will allow us to continue to carry the program to the point where we can make what we think now is a reasonable launch date of 2018," Bolden told the Senate Appropriations Committee's panel in charge of NASA spending.

Mikulski, whose state includes the headquarters for the JWST project, questioned the wisdom of ignoring the Casani report's recommendation for more funding.

"I'm ready to be frugal, but I don't want to be foolish," Mikulski said. "Because if we skimp now, we then end up paying two or three times (more) later, and that's what I don't want."

Developed as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST is a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency. With a 21.3-foot-diameter primary mirror, the telescope is designed to peer back in time almost to the Big Bang, giving astronomers a glimpse of infant galaxies as the universe cooled after its formation.

In a report on NASA's JWST project management practices, an independent review panel said in November that the James Webb telescope needed an extra $500 million over the next two years to have a chance of launching by the end of 2015.

But that money's not available in the 2011 budget and is unlikely to be there in 2012.

"We right now are looking at how much (money) we need to add for 2012," Bolden said.

The White House's fiscal year 2012 budget request in February called for flat spending on JWST over the next five years. But that spending plan is subject to consultation with Congress and the results of the ongoing program review within NASA.

Nicknamed the Casani report after its chairman, the independent board concluded last year that JWST was based on a flawed project budget that led to inadequate funding reserves to address mounting delays and technical snafus.

Richard Howard, JWST's newly-appointed program manager, said in February the launch of JWST was likely to be pushed back to 2016, or even later, due to overall federal spending cutbacks.

NASA officials were pessimistic then about receiving the funding boost recommended in the Casani report, and as the likelihood of extra money drops, the telescope's probable launch date has continued to slide later in the decade.

Before the Casani report's release in November, NASA officially forecasted JWST would blast off in 2014. In the five months since the panel issued its findings, NASA managers' unofficial statements have moved JWST's launch four years later.

NASA is completing a thorough assessment of the program before announcing JWST's official revamped schedule and budget. Bolden told the Senate subcommittee NASA hopes to finish a draft baseline assessment by the end of April.

"I respect the Casani report," Bolden said. "When we looked at what they said and where we are in these fiscal times, I cannot responsibly bring myself to this committee, or any other, and propose that someone try to find $500 million for the foreseeable future. We are working up a baseline, and there will be some additional spending that will be required, but we have not arrived at that."

The Casani report said JWST was making steady technical process despite the budget issues. Nearly 75 percent of the telescope's hardware is currently in production, according to Scott Willoughby, JWST's program manager at Northrop Grumman Corp., the observatory's prime contractor.

"The hardware is getting ready," Willoughby said Wednesday. "It's just a matter of how much funding we get in each fiscal year. The more money we get, the more stuff we'll do."

Northrop Grumman oversees an array of subcontractors building the telescope's mirrors, composite structure and other components.

Facing tight funding over the last several years, Northrop Grumman has prioritized development and construction work to focus on the most complex and costly systems first.

"If we hold to the 2018 (launch date), and that's still in work with the various funding scenarios, that would mean we'll have seven more years of work to do," Willoughby told reporters in a press briefing. "We would do that in an incremental fashion and finish up work on one thing, then move on to another."

One big-ticket item has been the building, polishing and testing of JWST's 18 primary mirror segments, a complicated system that must be perfectly smooth and operate at cryogenic temperatures as low as -390 degrees Fahrenheit.


JWST's mirror segments have already been through the Marshall Space Flight Center for a first round of tests. After more polishing, the mirrors will return in 2011 and 2012 for final checks in cryogenic conditions. Credit: NASA
 
Six of the mirror segments will begin final cold-temperature testing this week at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the last step in construction for those beryllium gold-coated mirrors. Two more sets of six segments will be tested at Marshall's cryogenic chamber through early 2012, Willoughby said.

With such a high volume of work left to go before launch, there's not enough money to simultaneously go full-speed ahead on all JWST's major hardware.

"We're building a box, a mirror, a composite tube, a membrane," Willoughby said. "We're in the parts phase now."

Willoughby argued against scaling back JWST's lofty science goals and stringent operational constraints, an idea being considered to streamline test campaigns and move up the mission's launch.

"There's a point in time where it gets more expensive to descope than to keep on going because you have to consider architecture and design changes," Willoughby said.

[Salo]

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/04/14/355598/nasa-further-delays-webb-telescope-launch.html

DATE:14/04/11
SOURCE:Flight International
NASA further delays Webb telescope launch[/size]

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden has declared the James Webb Space Telescope [JWST] will not launch until at least 2018.

Bolden made those remarks on 11 April before a Congressional panel in Washington, DC.

The revised launch date is the latest in a series of blows to the troubled telescope programme, which is at least $1.5 billion over budget and four years behind the initially projected launch date.

In his Congressional testimony, Bolden said he would not ask for additional funds for the programme for fiscal year 2011. The agency does not believe it needs funding in the current fiscal year to allow it to continue to carry the JWST programme for "what we think now is a reasonable launch date of 2018", Bolden says.

NASA's FY2011 budget is contained within the continuing resolution authorising governmental expenditures, which the US Congress is due to vote on later today. It is widely anticipated that NASA will be authorised to spend slightly less than its FY2010 budget.

NASA's FY2012 budget requested $373 million for JWST, but Bolden notes that figure was preliminary. He aims to firm up NASA's request for FY2012 by May of this year.

The Casani Report, an independent review of the JWST programme's budget and management released in November, suggested the launch would be delayed to recover from serious budgetary and management problems. The report stated that an additional $500 million would be required to launch at the earliest possible moment, anticipated to be September 2015. The rationale behind the 2018 date was not explained before Congressional committee.

JWST is designed to measure infrared light, and is widely considered the successor to the iconic Hubble Space Telescope.

[Salo]

http://www.rian.ru/science/20110617/389470172.html

Астрономы впервые увидели, как черная дыра разорвала звезду[/size]
11:45 17/06/2011

МОСКВА, 17 июн - РИА Новости. Американские астрономы впервые практически в "прямом эфире" увидели, что происходит со звездой, которая неосторожно приблизится к массивной черной дыре - ее гравитация разрывает светило на куски, порождая мощнейшую вспышку излучения.

По оценке ученых, такие события могут происходить в одной галактике примерно раз в 100 миллионов лет.

Это событие, зафиксированное орбитальным гамма-телескопом "Свифт" (Swift) в марте этого года, описала группа под руководством Джошуа Блума (Joshua Bloom) из университета Калифорнии в Беркли в статье, опубликованной в пятницу в журнале Science.

Яркая вспышка гамма-излучения (гамма-всплеск), получившая индекс Sw 1644+57, была зафиксирована "Свифтом" в созвездии Дракона 28 марта. Первоначально ученые полагали, что это событие, как и все другие гамма-всплески, которые наблюдаются примерно раз в день, является проявлением коллапса массивной звезды в черную дыру.

Однако уже 31 марта Блум разослал коллегам электронное письмо, в котором заявлял, что характеристики вспышки сильно отличаются от обычных, и это вовсе не гамма-всплеск, а излучение струи плазмы высокой энергии, которую испустила звезда с массой примерно равной Солнцу в момент, когда ее разорвало тяготение черной дыры в миллион раз более массивной.

Тщательный анализ данных "Свифта", а также дополнительные наблюдения с орбитальных телескопов "Хаббл" и "Чандра" подтвердили первоначальное предположение Блума.

"Звезда, которая проходит слишком близко к массивной черной дыре, разрывается гравитационными силами, порождая яркую вспышку... Вспышка высокой энергии Sw 1644+57 первоначально демонстрировала никогда прежде не наблюдавшиеся особенности. Наблюдения свидетельствуют, что это было событие аккреции на черную дыру массой от 100 тысяч до 1 миллиона солнечных", - говорится в статье.

Исследователи пишут, что "черная дыра-убийца" находится в центре галактики, расположенной примерно в 4 миллиардах световых лет от Земли.

По их расчетам, примерно 10% массы погибшей звезды, которая образовала аккреционный диск вокруг черной дыры, перешло в энергию рентгеновского излучения. Кроме того, гамма-излучение испускают струи плазмы, выброшенные почти со световой скоростью от полюсов черной дыры.

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110623-nasa-suspends-payments-orbital.html

One major NASA science program that apparently will not be getting additional money this year despite an apparent urgent need is the James Webb Space Telescope. An independent panel told NASA last fall that the $5 billion-plus infrared astronomy mission would need an additional $250 million in 2011 to maintain a newly projected 2015 launch date.

 "NASA continues to make progress on the development of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and is completing the JWST replan," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a letter accompanying the June 15 operating plan. "We may submit an updated FY2011 Operating Plan this summer."

[instml]

НАСА закончило подготовку зеркал телескопа "Джеймс Уэбб"

МОСКВА, 30 июн - РИА Новости. Специалисты американского аэрокосмического агентства НАСА закончили шлифовку и полировку зеркал для орбитального телескопа "Джеймс Уэбб", который планируется запустить в сентябре 2015 года, сообщила пресс-служба агентства.

Новый телескоп "Джеймс Уэбб" (James Webb Space Telescope, JWST) должен "сменить" орбитальный телескоп "Хаббл". Изначально новый аппарат планировалось запустить в 2014 году, но значительное превышение затрат на него и отставание от графика уже вынудили НАСА перенести предполагаемую дату старта миссии на сентябрь 2015 года. По мнению некоторых экспертов, "Джеймс Уэбб" будет запущен не ранее 2017-2018 года.

Как отмечается в сообщении, у "Джеймса Уэбба" четыре типа зеркал, площадь главного зеркала составляет примерно 25 квадратных метров. Обработкой зеркал, сделанных из бериллия, занималась компания L3 Integrated Optical Systems в Ричмонде, штат Калифорния. Их шлифовали и полировали до точности менее одной миллионной доли дюйма, поскольку только такое качество подготовки зеркала обеспечит резкость изображений при температуре минус 240 градусов Цельсия, в которой будет работать орбитальный телескоп.

"Подготовка зеркал "Уэбба" всегда считалась самой сложной и важной технологической задачей в производстве телескопа, поэтому завершение работы над ними - очень большой прорыв", - сказал менеджер оптики проекта телескопа Ли Файнберг (Lee Feinberg), чьи слова приводятся в сообщении.

После шлифовки и полировки зеркала покрывают очень тонким слоем золота, чтобы они хорошо отражали инфракрасное излучение. На 13 из 18 сегментов главного зеркала покрытие уже нанесли, остальные будут обработаны к началу 2012 года.

"Завершение подготовки зеркал показывает, что наша стратегия - сначала делать самые сложные вещи - действительно окупилась. Многие астрономы сомневались, что мы вообще сможем создать эти зеркала", - подчеркнул научный руководитель проекта в Центре космических полетов имени Годдарда (GSFC), нобелевский лауреат Джон Мазер (John Mather).

http://www.rian.ru/science/20110630/395828467.html

[instml]

Программа создания космического телескопа им. Дж. Вебба может быть полностью свернута.
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110706-nasa-budget-cancel-webb.html
http://www.space.com/12187-nasa-budget-bill-cancels-space-telescope-house.html

[instml]

Правительство США пожалело денег на преемника "Хаббла"

Новый бюджет NASA предусматривает сокращение финансирования космических исследований, сообщает The New York Times. В частности, предусмотрено свертывание работ по главному проекту NASA и сменщику "Хаббла" - космическому телескопу "Джеймс Уэбб".

В общей сложности бюджет предусматривает сокращение финансирования NASA примерно на 9 процентов - с 18,4 миллиарда в 2011 году до 16,8 миллиарда долларов. При этом в традиционном обращении к сенаторам президент Барак Обама просил увеличить бюджет космического агентства до 18,7 миллиардов долларов. Часть сокращений обусловлена выводом из эксплуатации шаттлов - на этом планируется сэкономить более миллиарда долларов.

В пресс-релизе, которым сопровождается выход первой версии бюджета, говорится, что проект телескопа закрыт из-за излишне высокой стоимости и плохого управления. Бюджет еще не утвержден окончательно - этот процесс может занять несколько месяцев.

В конце 2010 года независимая комиссия, оценивавшая работы по созданию телескопа, пришла к выводу, что "Джеймс Уэбб" обойдется на 1,5 миллиарда долларов дороже, чем считалось ранее. На настоящий момент стоимость проекта оценивается в 6,8 миллиарда долларов. По данным Science, на создание аппарата NASA уже потратило 3 миллиарда, в частности, завершило полировку фрагментов основного 6,5-метрового зеркала космического аппарата.

Планируется, что телескоп будет обращаться на расстоянии 1,5 миллиона километров от Земли в так называемой Лагранжевой точке L2 системы Земля-Солнце, где аппарат будет защищен от светила земной тенью. Чувствительность телескопа должна превысить чувствительность "Хаббла" (который на днях выполнил свое миллионное наблюдение) в некоторых диапазонах в сто раз.

http://www.lenta.ru/news/2011/07/07/webb/

[pkl]

Вот это даааа!!! :shock: Проект, задушивший столько конкурентов сам дохнет. Признаться, не ожидал. Но, как я понимаю, это только проект?