How Long Before the Webb Telescope Dies? | Richard Panek

Hubble's original life s was going to be 10 or 15 years but they but they didn't anticipate that they would be able to make repair missions for instance to keep it going that new technology would would allow it to keep going so for for web the ballpark figure has always been somewhere around 20 years uh but you know but you have to but you know but but but what if the micr med orates keep hitting it bigger ones than they imagine then you're then you're talking about you know a lifespan of five years four or five years so they have to be realistic and temporary expectations a little bit but as I said earlier now they're looking at more than 20 years which would take us into the 20 Fe which is when the next Generation Space Telescope will be launching now in the book you obviously highlight these beautiful images that are so mesmerizing you do mention also kind of a little bit of a maybe it's inside baseball but the controversy surrounding you know how do you assign a color to an infrared image can you talk about what you learned about that process of assigning colors audience can appreciate yeah that was was fascinating somebody asked me a few weeks ago so if I go online now can I see what web is seeing and I said no because web is just web is collecting photons and it's the photons become as I said earlier zeros and ones and then those get shoveled toward Earth and then through what they call the pipeline at Space Telescope Science Institute uh and eventually ones and twos I'm sorry zeros and ones can be converted into images web as we've been saying sees into the infrared and it sees like about 27 microns and uh to put it in perspective what we see with our eyes is less than one micron so okay it sees 27 microns