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New space telescope expected to make Hubble 'look simple'

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Imagine an $8.8 billion telescope as big as a tennis court capturing images of outer space never before seen by mankind while it is a million miles from Earth, four times the distance between this planet and the moon, and working in temperatures more than 400 degrees below zero.

Welcome to the next frontier in astrophysics, one that’s coming in 2019 and has a couple of Ohio connections.Ken Sembach, director of the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, said his institute will soon launch the James Webb Space Telescope, which he predicts will blow people away with mind-boggling images of stars and galaxies billions of light years from Earth.

Often referred to by the abbreviation JWST, the Webb telescope has been in the making for years.

Originally planned for blast-off this October, it will be launched in early to mid-2019 by a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket.

The launch will be from Arianespace's ELA-3 launch complex at European Spaceport, near Kourou, French Guiana. A site near the equator was chosen because the spin of the Earth can give an additional push there, NASA said.

Earth’s surface at the equator moves at 1,038 mph, according to the space agency’s calculations.

“We have to get it right,” Mr. Sembach said, telling an audience of more than 100 people inside the University of Toledo’s Wolfe Hall on Thursday night he is unfazed by and completely supports NASA’s decision to wait until 2019 so it can do more testing.

Source :- toledoblade
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