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Originally Posted by Saluki
Please don't run me out on a rail, but how much further scientific value can we expect to get from Hubble? I know that it was the wonder of its day, and gets images with much better resolution than earth-bound telescopes. However, it seems that it has accomplished much of what it was designed to do.
It seems to me that it is time to replace the old guy with a bigger space scope with better optics, ccd's, etc. Am I way off-base on this?
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Probably
Note the present tense "gets images". There is nothing in serious development which equals the quality of HST imaging in visible light (and as far as I know that includes adaptive-optics systems, which may get superior central peaks but with fluffy and time-variable wings which are, so far, the bane of sensitive work on objects such as quasar host galaxies). It may have done what it was designed to do, but it has done far more and continues to do so.
It sounds sensible to replace it with a larger, higher-resolution optical telescope (which, note, JWST is not). However, such a thing is not on the table, NASA internal politics being what it is. The choice for people writing their congressfolk seems to be either service HST, push for something lik the Hubble Origins Probe which is a similar (but unaberrated) telescope with better detectors, or... nothing.
Space astronomy is funny.