And they gave NASA a blank check for all intents and purposes to make it happen, and damn the expense. They were not going to let the Soviet Union be the first to land a man in the Moon!
The fact that we got better intercontinental ballistic missiles and spy satellites out of it was purely coincidental, I’m sure.
To say nothing of the fracturing of efforts into Space Force (DOD). And maybe the WFIRST/Nancy Grace Roman that was the gift (???) from the intelligence services that found they already had enough capability and had no use for the Hubble-quality telescope body, but why not wait a decade or two or so to decide that we do need more telescopes in orbit. Ad infinitum
It’s actually one of two. There apparently has been some thought of sending the other one to survey Mars in more detail. No Earth observation, though; a condition of the donation was that NASA was prohibited to point either of these telescopes at Earth.
The second of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s four primary scientific instruments, known as the Mid-Infrared instrument (MIRI), has concluded its postlaunch preparations and is now ready for science.
Just a little stats candy while we wait for another week: Apparently NASA released a tease or two for astronomers of the spectrographic resolution of MIRI. In the chart below, they targeted a single galaxy (for its hydrogen spike) during calibration. This chart reportedly shows it approximately compared to the previous best. Huge boost (# of points).
This comes via a YouTube video from astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smethurst’s channel, which contains more explanations at around 4m13s.
As the Webb team wraps up the final tests for commissioning this week, we are now only days away from the public release of the first images and spectra on July 12! This also means that Webb is moving into the phase of full science operations that includes a highly impressive suite of science programsfrom the solar system to the distant universe. The entire Webb team is ready to celebrate the long journey to this point and embark on the next few decades of groundbreaking infrared astronomy.
Three of the four science instruments on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have completed their commissioning activities and are ready for science.
Each of Webb’s instruments has multiple modes of operation, which need to be tested, calibrated, and ultimately verified before they can begin to conduct science. The latest instrument to complete this process, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, has four key modes the team officially confirmed as ready to go.