wrote in
oups.com:

As Hubble is phased out is there any plan for a replacement -- or do
ground-based telescopes now show the most promise?

The James Webb Space Telescope is under development for a 2011 launch. It
is not an exact HST replacement; it is intended for infrared astronomy
while HST excels in visible light and ultraviolet.

There are a number of proposals to use HST spare parts to build a
replacement, the most prominent being Johns Hopkins' Hubble Origins Probe
(HOP).

Ground-based telescopes can match HST in some ways using adaptive optics,
but there are some things HST does (such as UV) that ground-based
telescopes will never be able to do.

--
JRF

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