[aalleavitch]

The degree to which science has advanced since the Webb project started can't be understated either. We have a fundamentally better understanding of the technology available and what we even want to look at. Much better to simply move onto the next project, of which there are currently very many.

[jacquesm]

This one is probably my favorite:

https://www.space.com/nasa-telescope-far-side-of-moon.html

Though I'm not sure if it will ever be built.

[mulmen]

Even if such a device never made an observation or discovery the experience of building it and making it operational would be worthwhile.

[Phrenzy]

I wonder if they have a list of craters already picked out.

[noelrock]

Was going to reply along these lines. I was fortunate to live with someone who was working on the James Webb and telling me excitedly about it — back in 2006! Surely even with the various upgrades/spec changes/delays, things have moved sufficiently that whatever is started even today will be a marked upgrade.

In any event, many many areas to aim at, and relatively limited funding unfortunately.

[JumpCrisscross]

What’s the next project? Roman [1] doesn’t seem as groundbreaking as Webb was.

[1] https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/

[__alexs]

In 20 years we'll be talking about:

* LISA: LIGO In Space (Amazing!).

* LUVOIR: JWST but even bigger and UV.

[adgjlsfhk1]

LISA is incredibly cool!

[code_biologist]

Paul Sutter has a great astronomy and physics podcast called "Ask a Spaceman". His "Five Exciting Missions After James Webb" episode (20 min) got me really excited for the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiYVsoxbxAI

[sbierwagen]

I'd like to see a deep space version of the Gaia astrometry space telescope.

It measures the parallax shift of stars, and is basically the one reliable way of directly measuring how far away a star is from us. Unfortunately, it's at L2, and therefore has a baseline of 1 AU. Another Gaia way out at 20AU would have capacities no Earth-based telescope could ever have.

[lkbm]

I somehow didn't realize we already had pre-Webb stuff at L2. Luckily, Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrange_po...

[mulmen]

This seems like the kind of thing where two would actually be useful. Is there any benefit to making both observations at the same time? Or are the scales so great that it doesn't really matter?

[sbierwagen]

You'd almost certainly want to launch several. You get one data point per half-orbit, when you're at opposite sides of the Sun. This is tolerable for the Earth, where an orbit is one year. But a full orbit out at 20AU takes eighty four years! Collecting a useful number of samples with one spacecraft would take centuries, while two spacecraft in opposition on the same orbit can measure parallax instantly.

[adgjlsfhk1]

There has been a lot of work on earth based telescopes (eg the 30 meter, giant Magellan, and some array based telescopes) that are going online in the next decade.

[ncmncm]

Are superior terrestrial 'scopes even possible, anymore, with Starlink interference getting worse each week?

Serious question. Or can its interference be filtered out effectively?

[dotnet00]

For the most part, yes, with adaptive optics and corrective measures being taken to deal with more satellites in orbit, ground telescopes are superior or at least comparable to space telescopes given their ability to be much larger.

Space telescopes these days are primarily being designed for observations that simply can't be done while in the atmosphere (eg the wavelengths JWST and NGR look at). The value of a space telescope in the same wavelength range as what ground based telescopes usually use would mainly benefit in terms of being able to have much longer exposures.

[SiempreViernes]

Yes they are very much possible, and cheaper than space too.

What starlink does is ruin part of the images, and if the thing you were interested in observing happens to be blocked by a starlink trail you're hosed: a thing literally blocked what you tried to see and you lost the nigh (because usually you get just a bit of the a night for your observation). Other things that ruins your night is clouds, so starlink effectively makes the weather at a site worse, only you find out after the night that it was all a waste.

To some extent you can plan around it, but as the mega constellations grow they'll have to avoid each other more frequently and there's no rules for how that shits coordinated, so you maybe you can know in advance that the night is wasted.

But the risk that a satellite is in an undocumented orbit by the time you try to observe will likely be very high in the future.

[adgjlsfhk1]

This isn't correct for Starlink because a satellite can only obscure an object for a few seconds.

[SiempreViernes]

Have you taken a photo while someone else used a flash? The flash is also only on for a fraction of the camera exposure but you sure as hell notice when it happened and it went off close to what you wanted to depict you will just have to take a new photo.

The length of the occlusion isn't very relevant when the thing going in front is orders of magnitudes brighter than what you are trying to observe.

Example: https://imgb.srgcdn.com/5i9W2KZAXha7p27YHHR2.png?width=1024 good luck extracting any data from behind that flash.

[ncmncm]

How does the telescope know it is "obscured" by something local, and not legitimately fluctuating?

[maskedinvader]

My understanding is ground based telescopes imaging in the same wavelengths also have to deal with distortion in the atmosphere, star link interference would be easier to filter out compared to the other stuff (which is why locations for these mega ground based telescopes are chosen with utmost care )

Disclaimer. Not a physicals or astronomer, just a enthusiastic backyard amateur astronomer who reads a lot about telescopes .

[wumpus]

Yes, there are many kinds of science which can be done more cheaply from the ground.

Even considering the effect of Starlink.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Both of these would be groundbreaking, but they're still very much at the "Maybe..." stage.

https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-might-put-a-huge-telescope-...

[aalleavitch]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_space_obser...