James Webb Space telescope funding assured - for now

After some very real concerns for several months, the US Senate has approved full funding for the JWST's development requirements for 2012 - $530 million. But it seems the whole shamozzle will come back again next year.

A lot of the problems come from the blow-outs in costs for the telescope. Not surprising given that so much of the technology being put into the project hasn't even been invented yet!

Estimates on the final price for the JWST are around $9 billion.

To put that into perspective, no-one doubts that the Hubble Space Telescope has delivered on its cost many times over. Well in today's dollars, Hubble's final cost was about $10 billion!

(Yes sorry this story is a little old - bit of a backlog.)