--- title: The Future of Telescopes | TIME description: For astronomers, telescopes are the one indispensable tool. It’s a good thing then that we are in living in something of a boom time for telescope building—and some of the best instruments are being deployed in one of two places: Chile or space. canonical: https://time.com/video/Ury7rR8x/ og:title: The Future of Telescopes og:description: For astronomers, telescopes are the one indispensable tool. It’s a good thing then that we are in living in something of a boom time for telescope building—and some of the best instruments are being deployed in one of two places: Chile or space. og:url: https://time.com/video/Ury7rR8x/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Ury7rR8x/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Future of Telescopes twitter:description: For astronomers, telescopes are the one indispensable tool. It’s a good thing then that we are in living in something of a boom time for telescope building—and some of the best instruments are being deployed in one of two places: Chile or space. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Ury7rR8x/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The Future of Telescopes > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The Future of Telescopes [Watch (HLS stream): The Future of Telescopes](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Ury7rR8x.m3u8) (3:17)  _Published 2017-07-31. For astronomers, telescopes are the one indispensable tool. It’s a good thing then that we are in living in something of a boom time for telescope building—and some of the best instruments are being deployed in one of two places: Chile or space._ --- Jul 27, 2023 10:21 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [How Telescopes Detect Exoplanets](/video/mcUahEWN/) ### How Telescopes Detect Exoplanets [Missle Carries Iris Space Telescope into Orbit](/video/JHVzt5tP/) ### Missle Carries Iris Space Telescope into Orbit [Looking Through The World's Largest Telescope](/video/gAyY2KaA/) ### Looking Through The World's Largest Telescope --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] For both astronomers and amateur sky watchers the great eclipse of 2017 is a wonderful cosmic freebie. It's the rare space phenomenal that can be fully observed and fully enjoyed entirely without an telescope. But for all other astronomical work Telescopes. The bigger, the better, remain the one indispensable tool. It's a good thing then that we're living in something of a boom time for telescope- building. And some of the best instruments are being deployed in one of two places. Chile or space itself. Not all of the country lends itself to telescope construction. But the Atacama Desert does, covering 40, 000 square miles of the Chilean coast, the Atacama is considered the driest place in the world. Cloudless at least 300 days a year. Combine that with a tenuous air of the desert's 13, 000 foot elevation and you get an almost completely clear window on the sky And that has brought the astronomers flocking. Currently, more than half a dozen radio telescope observatories from countries around the world are at work in the Atacama. Newest and most impressive is the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a massive installation built by the United States, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, and a consortium of European nations. The array consists of 66 separate radio dishes, and has the ability to expand to still more, all of them peering deep into space and far back in time. [ UNKNOWN ] Forward another foot please. As for the space- based observatories, the 800 pound gorilla is, of course, the Hubble Space Telescope. But Hubble is also an old gorilla, having been in orbit since 1990. With no more space shuttles to ferry up astronauts for occasional repair missions, Hubble is always just one significant malfunction away from going dark entirely The good news is that the vulnerable telescope is not alone. The most important and productive of the space flop include [ UNKNOWN ] Chandra X- Ray Observatory, the Swift Gamma- Ray Burst Explorer, and the celebrated Kepler Space Telescope which is being in the space since 2009. [ MUSIC ] More exiting is what's in the Pipeline especially the James Webb Space Telescope which will be launched in 2018. Web is the instrument that will take [ UNKNOWN ] place and it's upgrade in almost every way. From its 21 feet diameter mirror which dwells [ UNKNOWN ] 840 model to its ability in to do most of its observing in the infra red. Meaning it can peer straight through the clouds of interstellar dust that often obscure Hubble's view. None of these observatories, either in space or on the ground, will answer all of the questions human beings have about the universe. But the telescopes are expanding our view all the same, throwing back the curtain of the cosmos a little more. Free discovery they make. [ MUSIC ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Future of Telescopes","description":"For astronomers, telescopes are the one indispensable tool. 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