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Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by maxnoe on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:05AM (#18166277)
It only needs to be operational until the James Webb Telescope is available.

As soon as this happens, most astronomers will jump ship anyway

Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by SiempreViernes on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:24AM (#18166383)
Ha, good one! :D

Like saying "it just needs to work until Longhorn ships" ;)

In any case, JWST doesn't have UV capability, so it is not a straightforward replacement of what Hubble does. It just able to look at more distant objects because they've all been red shifted into the IR.

Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by InclinedPlane on Monday October 08, 2018 @04:42PM (#18171122)
JWST and HST are not comparable telescopes. Moreover, the idea that astronomers would stop using one world class telescope just because another one (even a better one) exists is sheer lunacy. Even if a space telescope that was worse than Hubble existed it would still be completely 100% booked in terms of observation time, because there is much more demand for those capabilities than there is supply, by orders of magnitude.
Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by kamaal on Monday October 08, 2018 @10:51AM (#18167973)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/science/nasa-webb-telesco...

Basically it will be launched in March 2021, if at all.

By the way, every-time the launch year approaches they delay it by a good 2 - 3 years, and this has been the case almost forever.

Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by baq on Monday October 08, 2018 @07:29AM (#18166411)
completely different devices built for completely different purposes. there's nothing quite like the hubble.
Re:Hubble Space Telescope Is In Safe Mode After Gyro Failure by yholio on Monday October 08, 2018 @12:34PM (#18168891)
Sure, but the jump is still tempting for the scientific top brass. There's only so much that can be learned in the visible spectrum and only so many Noble prizes, PhDs, tenures and grants to be had. Staying on Hubble is scraping the barrel when the new sexy JWST promises to open whole new fields of scientific inquiry.