Kyle S. answered • 7d
UT Austin Alum recently relocated to The Woodlands
The better question is why do they send any telescope to space? As an engineer, think if you would find these things that make it easier or harder to build an incredibly precise telescope: Once the object begins service, the only way to service any part of you your device is to is to send a manned space flight there? Um...it must be impervious to massive swings in temperature, decreased gravity, and once again...if anything breaks you're looking at $10K/lb. of material you need to launch fast enough to escape earth's gravity. That all sounds like and is a nightmare! So---the question remains---why on earth would they ever spend billions of dollars to launch, service and decommision a space telescope when its so much easier and cheaper and can have bigger mirrors that can be cleaned when they build them on the ground. The answer is in the air. Literally.
Despite the fact that the atmosphere of the earth:earth what the skin of an apple:apple...this atomosphere we are lucky enough to have is skin thin, yet still the turbulent air manages to make it the better option to launch telescopes above all that atmosphere into orbit. Hubble was launched and when they first turned it on...Whoops....I think it was a NASA contractor had scratched the objective lens and the images were HORRIBLE...and they had to send multiple missions(read entire space shuttle missions) to repair it and later to service it and extend its life several times. But...just go take a look at a best of Hubble images and prepare to be absolutely floored...and then do something even more interesting...search for the Pillars of Creation and Hubble/JWST and side by side comparison. Why can we see so much more with the JWST? If I get any requests maybe I'll get into that in an ask the expert.
So to do the best science, you have to launch your telescope, right? Well...not anymore. Thanks to AI and new tech that began its life very much as a military imaging or targeting project surely...the AI is now powerful enough to "de-noise" images made of photons that have been scattered by the atmosphere by essentially running the physics in reverse...or at least thats what the still in construction ELO in the other big sky country...Chile...at the top of the Andes mountains in the middle of the Atacama desert. Bonus question that if you don't get...you fail....why at the top of a mountain in a desert? Because they put alot of the atmosphere under them there and almost never have clouds obscuring their view. It will be interesting to see if it performs as well as the sales people are selling it...its definitely expensive.
(re: Mars which was just small enough[roughly 85% of Earth's voulme] that it's iron core stopped swishing around causing the core to solidify...bye bye magnetic field protecting your atmosphere from the solar wind that is holding the atmosphere down with less force since gravity was lower... and you end up with a dead planet. Venus went the other direction.)
