The Hubble Telescope has been in orbit around the Earth for nearly 17 years; while it will still see a few more years in space, NASA is already working on its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, in which they will be looking to IBM for some much needed help.  

Estimated at US $3.5 billion, the James Webb is a much needed and improved telescope supporting a collecting area six times that of Hubble, with half the mass, and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. One challenge NASA must first overcome remains in the development of its software.

The software required to operate the James Webb will be written by programmers from NASA, and the European and Canadian space agencies. This is where IBM comes in; trying to get developers from around the globe to come together and create over 200,000 lines of code.

Using IBM’s software, Rational Rose Real-time, NASA plans to create a logical blue print of the software needed to run the James Webb (similar to a flowchart).  Programmers can then write sections of code to place in the logical model. Rational Rose keeps track of real time changes across the system; thereby allowing a quicker, more productive, and reliable method for creation of the software.

NASA is hoping to get a better look at the first stars and galaxies which were formed in the universe by using dedicated infrared technology which can observe at almost all of the infrared spectrum. The space based James Webb will provide a much larger infrared spectral window than that of similar ground based telescopes, which have to deal with atmospherical interferences such as water and temperature. 

While the James Webb is still in a preliminary design phase, no specific date has been set for its launch; however, NASA claims it will be no earlier than 2013.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 7:20 pm under Science and technology.

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