john mather

Astronomy: The telescope-in-a-bottle problem

The James Webb Space Telescope is slated to launch in 2010.

NASA is searching for the first sunrisethat long-ago time when the first generation of stars ignited, flaring into life out of the uniform drabness that followed the Big Bang. The James Webb Space Telescope (named for the man who headed NASA in the 1960s) boasts a collapsible 20-foot mirror that will gather infrared light, unlike its predecessor the Hubble, which collected visible light. This will make the Webb far more able to catch rays from the universe's earliest stars.

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