MORE money for science tends to be good news. But in the case of the beleaguered James Webb Space Telescope, it's not that simple.
JWST, the heir to the Hubble Space Telescope, was designed to search for signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres and peer back at the universe's first galaxies. But it is now seven years behind schedule and has run so over-budget that the US Congress proposed axing it in July.
On 14 September a Senate subcommittee made additions to a bill granting JWST $530 million in 2012, more than enough to finish the observatory by 2018.Not all astronomers think this is good news. Some fear that the behemoth telescope will devour money from other planetary science and solar physics projects.
In an 8 September letter to the leaders of the American Astronomical Society, David ...
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