"THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE AND BEYOND"
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will extend the scientific discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope by observing infrared light from the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets, looking farther into space and back in time to understand how we got here from the Big Bang. The JWST project, led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian Space Agencies, will launch a 6 m telescope to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2 in 2010. It will carry cameras, spectrometer, and coronagraphs to cover the wavelength range from 0.6 to 28 µm.
After JWST, there are even more ambitious missions being
planned. The SAFIR (Single Aperture Far IR) telescope (pronounced like
"sapphire") would cover longer IR wavelengths, and the SUVO (Space Ultraviolet
Optical) telescope would cover short wavelengths that can not be observed
from the ground either. The SUVO might also carry a coronagraph to
find planets. A wide range of possibilities of space interferometers is
also under consideration, both for planet finding and for general astronomy.