[dr_orpheus]

> over hundreds of years to analyze

Seems like an aggressive estimate. For example the Kepler spacecraft produced a lot of data for its planet finding mission. The light curves that it sent back had some automated processing, but had multiple rounds of inspection for identifying the "objects of interest" and then confirming actual planet candidates. The backlog was on the order of a year to when data was taken. This had the additional complexity that to confirm a planet transit you really had to see it pass in front of the star twice to confirm the orbital period.

JWST will also be delivering similar data over its lifetime, but I would assume that ground processing of that data will significantly improve over that timeframe.

[easton_s]

A kindergartener today will utilize Kepler data 15 years from now in a novel way we are technologically locked out of today. Technology will always breath new life into a dataset.