Posted by Ray Katz in NASA, current
Hubble gets company—and “competition”
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is getting company in the form of a repair crew from the shuttle Atlantis.
Herschel: biggest telescope in space
But the HST is also getting another kind of company: two more space telescopes were launched today. An Arianne 5 rocket put the European space telescopes, Herschel and Planck, into space.
Herschel has a 3.5m diameter mirror and is the biggest telescope in space—ever. (That’s 50% bigger than Hubble.) Planck is smaller and is considered a “survey” telescope. Still, it’s expected to make the finest measurements ever of the “cosmic background noise” of the oldest light in the universe.
These magnificent new machines aren’t yet ready for use. In the next few weeks, ground controllers will be working to place them into the proper position and orbits to do their work.
Meanwhile, the huge James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled for launch in 2014.
