Posted on 02/24/2017 9:00:55 AM PST by Hostage
The discovery of seven habitable planets just 40 light years away is certainly impressive, but the fact is, they are still 40 light years away. Unless we're willing and able to spend thousands of years traveling through space, we won't be rolling into the TRAPPIST-1 system anytime soon. This means that over the coming decades, advanced scientific instruments closer to home will play very important roles in exploring these distant worlds – perhaps none more so than the James Webb Space Telescope. So what can we expect when it is fired into orbit next year? We checked in with some of the scientists behind yesterday's hugely exciting discovery to learn how astronomers will use NASA's next-generation space telescope to probe the secrets of the TRAPPIST-1 system.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been almost two decades in the making and, spanning the size of a tennis court, will be the largest space telescope ever assembled. Poised to take the reins from Hubble as NASA's premier orbiting telescope in 2018, it will boast seven times the light-collecting capacity of its predecessor and will be sensitive enough to spot a single firefly one million kilometers away.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Oxygen is a byproduct of life, not a requirement for early forms of it. Nitrogen is a mostly inert gas that also wasn’t necessary for very early forms. One of the big problems with terraforming Mars, by the way, is that it’s nitrogen poor. It might support simple micro bacteria but not plants. CO2 and water is necessary for photosynthesis, of course. A flammable atmosphere would probably contain alkanes (like Titan) in addition to oxygen. A single meteor would set it on fire, making it no longer flammable again.
I worked on JWST....it was frustrating because we knew the budget and schedule was phony. We also knew that Webb was taking monies away from important research that needed to be done
Part of the problem with such programs that you might not be aware of is budget consistency.
Many times program managers will pad a budget and inflate a budget because they are expecting budget cuts. Their practice is a means of ensuring their program survives.
The JWST appears to have been a victim of erratic budgeting and scheduling as other programs vied for priority in budgeting. Telescopes would likely be the first to put on a backburner.
Let’s see how the new administration sets practice standards. Maybe we will see some welcome changes.
The goals and prescription were changed twice.... when orogram objectives change ur is hard to maintain schedule. Program creep always affects budget
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