Nobel physicist focuses on Hubble’s heir

When people look at the design of the Webb Space Telescope, they realize it's not anything like what the Hubble looks like.

Yes, the telescope uses completely new methods for getting a big telescope into space, because the telescope that we need for this purpose is larger than the rocket that we have to launch it with. So it has to be folded up, and this is a first for us, that a giant telescope deploys after launch and becomes adjusted to perfection afterward.

You know, we had a lot of trouble with the Hubble mirror a long time ago, and we learned how to adjust it — but we couldn't adjust it without sending up new equipment, which we did during servicing.

This new telescope is designed from the beginning to be adjusted after launch. All these 18 little hexagons of beryllium will be adjusted in position and radius of curvature so they focus as though they were pieces of a single perfect mirror to begin with.

So the situation with Hubble, where astronauts needed to put in some corrective equipment, is taken care of in the design of this telescope?

That's right. We plan to prove it on the ground, but this should be capable of withstanding the launch and becoming a perfect telescope in space.

There's a lot of discussion about where the money is going at NASA, and you hear space scientists grumbling about how much money is going into the manned space program. Could you talk about the cost of the Webb telescope and where it fits in the budgetary priorities?

The cost of the telescope is about the same as the cost of the Hubble Space Telescope was, just to get it into orbit. The Hubble has certainly proved its worth to science, and I expect that the JWST will as well. Costs did go up, which is not really a surprise in this business. About a year and a half ago, we saw that we needed more money. Fortunately, NASA was able to get that money and put it into this program.

It's also true that quite a lot of other programs at NASA have also risen in price. The manned program has had this tremendous jolt from the loss of the Columbia, which we're still recovering from. We still need to complete the space station and go ahead with finishing our international commitment to that. We have immense ambitions and modest budgets, by comparison with what we had in those glorious days when we were going to the moon for the first time. So we are learning how to do a vast amount more with less money than we had been. And I think quite successfully.

The new James Webb Space Telescope is far more powerful than the Hubble can be because it uses these new technologies: the folding up of the mirror and the longer-wavelength detectors that we couldn't have done 10 or 20 years ago. Because we've invested in these new technologies, the overall result is far more powerful for a similar budget.

How did you feel when NASA Administrator Mike Griffin decided to go ahead with the Hubble servicing mission? Does that have an impact on Webb operations?

I thought it was absolutely the right thing to do. Astronomers generally conclude that, because the Hubble telescope will be so much more powerful than it is today even, with the new equipment that will be in it. So we all love that idea.

The current estimate is that it will still be running about until the time that the JWST goes up. We don't know how long a piece of equipment will last, but it's expected to last until 2013. That's when JWST goes up. I think it's lovely.

MSNBC.com multimedia producer Jim Seida contributed to this report.

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