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 ...
Webb Hubble???
Atmospheres. More importantly, their content. Water vapor, oxygen.
Lol! Oh good grief! That is an unfortunate combination.
7 earth-like planets that could sustain alien life discovered. And today California granted them drivers licenses.
LOL!
The Moon has plenty if oxygen, trapped in rock. The technology to recover it is known, available, tested. It’s not a problem.
It’s the lack of nitrogen and hydrogen that make it challenging to build a long-term base on the Moon.
To shuttle liquid H2 and N2 from the Earth would require enormous thrust as those liquid forms are quite heavy. It would also require a lunar orbiting station for shuttling supplies and materials back and forth to the lunar surface.
But it could be done.
Having a Moon base is actually a good idea because launching probes and expeditions from the Moon is so much easier than from Earth (gravity differential).
>>>Let’s hope it won’t need corrective lenses like Hubble did, or a lot of service<<<
It cannot be fixed or serviced. It will not be in Earth Orbit. Once it is launched lots of fingers will be crossed. It has to unfurl its Mirror. Any glitch and too bad...
I Believe it will be stationed over a Million Miles from Earth and will Orbit the Sun.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/lro-lunar-hydrogen/
So they find planets 40 light years away that might hold life...might.
Our Nation is literally drowning in debt, has an infrastructure falling to pieces and yet we are spending dough to find planets so far away the distance has to be expressed in light years? Oy vey!
I’m no Luddite.
I think weather-sats are the greatest thing since bread itself.
My sense that this is all a waste goes for manned visit to the dead and desolate world of Mars. Why? Robots will do a better job and even that can be seen as a waste.
I just think the money could be better spent on more worthwhile pursuits - like safe roads or fixing bridges. YMMV
Lol
This is soooo far behind schedule and over budget....
That aside this article is a bit ahead of itself. Testing and flight readiness is still being done. Don’t hold your breath for lift off. Plus once residing at L2 there is NO way to service it. If anything goes wrong it’s a boat anchor
FakeNews.
I hear what you are saying, but I think you would find that the benefit of this type of work, dollar for dollar, is well beyond just the science that might be revealed, and much more valuable than the dollar for dollar benefit of much more costly programs.
One of the purposes of NASA, not expressed often enough, is to help foster and maintain a sufficiently educated workforce so that the national (defense) needs of our nation are never in peril. The manned and unmanned programs (and some people like one over the other) both inspire young people towards engineering disciplines, maintain critical industries that are able to produce dual use technologies that otherwise could not be sustained, and push new technologies that flow back to shape our future and make our lives easier (for better or worse).
Infrastructure certainly needs revamping, but the tech for new roads and bridges is always going to be there or able to be reconstituted in days or weeks, as opposed to years to restart some high tech manufacturing lines. And the savings available from other wasteful govt redistribution programs far exceed NASA's total budget.
Thank you for the thoughtful and cogent reply.
I’m waiting for the Jack Webb space telescope.
Avoid storing excess nuclear waste and the moon base should be fine.
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