The James Webb Space Telescope -- a colossal infrared telescope, and the formal successor to Hubble -- looks to have been saved from the chopping block as a Senate subcommittee approved funding for its 2018 launch.

Earlier this year, the orbiting observatory was under review for cancellation by the United States Congress, as America's science budget was put under strain. Despite being far into production, and having $3 billion spent on it already, astronomers around the globe feared that the telescope would never launch.

But the 2012 fiscal year science appropriation bill, marked up today by a Senate subcommittee, says that it will "provide funds to enable a 2018 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope." The bill will need to go to a full appropriations committee and then go to the Senate floor for a vote, before it's final.

"In a spending bill that has less to spend, we naturally focus on the cuts and the things we can't do," said CJS subcommittee chairwoman Barbara Mikulski. "But I'd like to focus on what we can do. The bill invests more than $12 billion in scientific research and high impact research and technology development, to create new products and new jobs for the future."

The James Webb Telescope has 21 mirrors, with 18 mirror segments working together as one to for a massive 21 foot primary mirror. They're made of beryllium to withstand the chilly temperatures of space, but coated with a tiny amount of gold to better reflect near-infrared light.

It will use these whopping great reflectors to be the most powerful space telescope ever built, and provide images of the first galaxies ever formed, and explore planets around distant stars. Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency have all joined forces to build it.

The bill also earmarks some $17.9 billion for Nasa as a whole to spend next year (a reduction of about $500 million from 2011), which "preserves NASA's portfolio balanced among science, aeronautics, technology and human space flight investments, including the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle, the heavy lift Space Launch System, and commercial crew development."


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