Astrophysicist, Nobel Laureate, and SPIE Fellow John Mather
-- senior project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescopy (JWST) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center -- told SPACE.com about the telescope's huge potential and precarious funding outlook in a recent interview.
Slated to launch in 2018, JWST has been called the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Yet the $8.7 billion project has frequently been delayed and over budget, the article notes. To make it to launch day, the JWST must win support from Congress during tough fiscal times.
Mather is the author of more than two dozen SPIE conference presentations, and has served on program committees for several SPIE conferences at SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation and other symposia.
Read the SPACE.com interview.
Read the SPIE press release for additional background.
Read the recent SPIE Newsroom article by Mather and his team on astronomical spectrocopy technology applied in the JWST and other projects.
