An artist’s impression of what the fully-deployed James Webb Space telescope will look like from the perspective of an observer on the ‘dark’ (non-Sun-facing) side of the observatory. The James Webb Space Telescope will launch in 2021 and will be our greatest infrared observatory ever, showcasing things we’d never find otherwise. However, it will also never live as long as Hubble already has. (NORTHROP GRUMMAN)

Why NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Will Never Live As Long As Hubble

Hubble’s still going strong after 31+ years. James Webb will never make it that long.

Every decision that’s made — in both astronomy and in life — comes with its own set of pros and cons. Setting up an observatory in space is expensive, precarious, and is dependent on a successful launch and deployment: there are multiple single-points-of-failure, and if anything catastrophic goes wrong, the entire mission is all for naught. Yet if you succeed, you can observe as no ground-based observatory can: without interference from the atmosphere, without concern for day-or-night, without being affected by terrestrial light pollution, and over a range of wavelengths that are heavily restricted back on Earth.

While NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope remains, in many ways, humanity’s premier optical observatory, its infrared views are fundamentally limited in many ways by its very design. In terms of temperature, resolution, light-gathering power and wavelength range, it will be significantly outclassed by the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, which will push back the frontiers of knowledge in many substantial ways. But one way that Webb will never be able to compete with Hubble is in terms of longevity. Whereas Hubble is back in action after overcoming its…