NASA says that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is on track for launch in 2013. The new telescope will replace the awesome Hubble telescope which has been responsible for a multitude of scientific discoveries and has captured countless amazing images of our universe since its launch in 1990. The JWST will be siginificantly larger than the Hubble with a primary mirror of 6.5m diameter, almost three times the size of Hubble’s.

There is a full scale model of the JWST on display outside the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. The $4.5 billion telescope will be launched into space by a European Ariane V rocket and will be placed 1.5 million km from Earth, at Lagrange Point 2, an area of gravitational balance between the Earth and the Sun’s gravitational fields.

In case you are wondering how the telescope is going to fit into an Ariane V rocket, the trick is the whole thing folds up and then once in space it unfolds to its full 24m length and 12m height as shown in this youTube vid animation.

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Filed under: astronomy, science, nasa