A Lockheed Martin-led team, which includes Raytheon, Honeywell, and Jackson and Tull, has announced its proposal for the NASA Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST).
NASA will award two $12 million contracts on 30 June for competing NGST designs. The Lockheed Martin team is facing competition from groups led by Ball Aerospace, TRW and an internal NASA-managed team.
Lockheed Martin's NGST proposal features a lightweight 8m (25ft)-diameter deployable mirror (above) attached to a main telescope body. The NGST, which will be optimised for infrared imaging and spectroscopy, is scheduled for launch in 2008.
The large aperture telescope will be able to see objects 400 times clearer than ground- and space-based telescopes, surpassing the spatial resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA, meanwhile, says it plans to keep the Hubble Space Telescope operational until 2010, after which it will be brought back to earth aboard the Space Shuttle and probably housed in the US National Air and Space Museum. The next Shuttle-servicing mission, to replace the spacecraft's gyros and to conduct other repair work, is due in October.
Source: Flight International