These include the 2007 launch date of the 3- to 3.5-meter Far Infrared Space Telescope FIRSST) and the 2004 launch of Planck, the rotating 1.5-meter mirror of which will detect microwave background radiation.
For the first time, the telescope's huge 8.2-meter mirror, some 27 feet in diameter, was focused on familiar celestial objects to check its light-gathering qualities.
CHARA consists of six one-meter telescopes separated in a way that gives them a resolution equivalent to a 330-meter mirror.
Size and weight constraints posed additional hurdles: An 8-meter mirror would never fit inside a rocket fairing, so it would have to fold up for launch.
The European Extremely Large Telescope (with a 39-meter mirror) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (24.5 meters) are already under construction, both in Chile.
And big instruments like the 10-meter Keck telescope and the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope, both in Hawaii, collect much more light than Hubble's 2.4-meter mirror, making them more sensitive to faint companions.
Astronomers have peered into their crystal ball and seen a lot of glass: a telescope with a 30- to 50-meter mirror, on which the largest telescopes being built today would fit like so many crackers on a plate.
They will build the structure that will hold the huge 39-meter mirror of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), as well as the domed building that will enclose it.
One official involved in the discussion envisions a 2-meter mirror nearly as capable as Hubble's but weighing only 200 kilograms, a fraction of the weight of Hubble's mirror.
The European Southern Observatory has begun construction of its European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) with a 39-meter mirror at Cerro Armazones in northern Chile, and a group of institutions from China, India, Japan, and the United States has started building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) at Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
