NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was expected to have an operational life through 2015 after a 2009 update. But now NASA says it will keep the landmark eye-in-the-sky going as long as technologically possible, even after its successor, the long-in-development James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is launched, due in 2018. As Space.com reported Wednesday:
“Hubble will continue to operate as long as its systems are running well,” Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said here at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Hubble, like other long-running NASA missions such as the Spitzer Space Telescope, will be reviewed every two years to ensure that the mission is continuing to provide science worth the cost of operating it, Hertz added.
(H/T: Mike Massimino, NASA Astronaut)
Image of planetary nebula taken by NASA Hubble Space Telescope.
