Twenty-five years and ten billion dollars in the making, the James Webb Space Telescope will enable scientists to see deeper into the past than ever before.
www.newyorker.com
Thanks. Amazing. So looking forward to this.
Curiously, in reading this "New Yorker" article there's an imbedded video "Who Owns The Moon" and some background on the "Outer Space Treaty" which was first created following Russia's launch of Sputnik. Appears there will be lots of controversy, legal wrangling, and discord when some nation readies to launch for a mission to mine some asteroid, especially as it appears the US has already 'legalized space mining' in 2015.
Here's a summation of this from Wikipedia:
"The Outer Space Treaty represents the basic legal framework of international space law. Among its principles, it bars states party to the treaty from placing weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise stationing them in outer space. It specifically limits the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes, and expressly prohibits their use for testing weapons of any kind, conducting military maneuvers, or establishing military bases, installations, and fortifications (Article IV). However, the treaty does not prohibit the placement of conventional weapons in orbit, and thus some highly destructive attack tactics, such as kinetic bombardment, are still potentially allowable. The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and that space shall be free for exploration and use by all the states.
The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial body such as the Moon or a planet. Article II of the treaty states that "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." However, the state that launches a space object retains jurisdiction and control over that object. The state is also liable for damages caused by its space object.
Being primarily an arms-control treaty for the peaceful use of outer space, it offers limited and ambiguous regulations to newer space activities such as lunar and asteroid mining. It therefore remains under contention whether the extraction of resources falls within the prohibitive language of appropriation or whether the use encompasses the commercial use and exploitation. Seeking clearer guidelines, private U.S. companies lobbied the U.S. government, and space mining was legalized in 2015 by introducing the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015. Similar national legislation to legalize the appropriation of extraterrestrial resources are now being introduced by other countries, including Luxembourg, Japan, China, India, and Russia, This has created some controversy regarding legal claims over the mining of celestial bodies for profit."