NASA today selected TRW of Redondo Beach, Calif., to build a Next-Generation Space Telescope (NGST), the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new space-based observatory will be known as the James Webb Space Telescope, named after James E. Webb, NASA's second administrator. Webb is best known for leading Apollo and a series of lunar exploration programs that landed the first humans on the Moon. He also initiated a vigorous space science program, responsible for more than 75 launches during his tenure, including America's first interplanetary explorers.

Teams led by Lockheed Martin and a TRW/Ball Aerospace confab of contractors fought hard for the stellar contract to build NGST.

The large, ultra-powerful infrared-optimized space telescope is designed to study the formation of the first stars and galaxies, the evolution of galaxies and the production of elements by stars, and the process of star and planet formation.

When boosted into space, and after a 3-month coast, NGST's final stop is to be 940,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, at the L2 Lagrange Point.

The combined gravitational forces of the Sun and the Earth can almost hold a spacecraft at this point, and it takes relatively little rocket thrust to keep the spacecraft near L2. Once on station and operating, the telescope can be pointed at select targets, a task much easier to do contrasted to the Earth-circling Hubble Space Telescope.

The cold and stable temperature environment of the L2 point will allow NGST to make the very sensitive infrared observations needed. Also, NGST is to be outfitted with a large shield that blocks the light from the Sun, Earth, and Moon, which otherwise would heat up the telescope, and interfere with the observations.

NGST will have a much larger primary mirror than Hubble - 2.5 times larger in diameter, or about 6 times larger in area. That gives the super-telescope much more light gathering power. Carrying improved infrared instruments in comparison to Hubble, NGST's on-duty skill is to observe the formation of stars and galaxies.

For the time being, NGST won't come with a servicing contract. That is, the telescope will be too far away to be accessible by space shuttle crews. In the future, however, some future thinkers at NASA do see robotic as well as human servicing crews working at that distance from Earth.

Moving forward on NGST has not been easy.

The observatory's sendoff into space is now slated for June 2010 - an 18 month slip from an earlier timetable. Lightweight mirror technology also proved to be no lightweight of a problem. NGST was at first to utilize a primary mirror 26-feet (8 meters) in diameter, since shrunk down to some 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter across.

However, picking the NGST contractor is a big plus for Bernard D. Seery, NGST Project Manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"With this announcement, NASA is transforming NGST from a viewgraph cartoon concept into a real, living, breathing satellite development which will reset the technology high water mark for years to come," he told SPACE.com.

"Since the beginnings of recorded time, humans have erected large, impressive structures down through the years as monuments to civilization. NASA's First Light Machine will be in some sense like the next great pyramid of Giza, equivalent also in many ways to the giant cathedrals built in 12th and 13th century Europe," Seery said.

NGST is key to answering two of the really "big" questions, Seery said. Namely, how did the early universe form, and how did we get here?

While NGST is slated for liftoff years from now, the first meeting of the NGST Science Working Group (SWG) is slated for September 24-25 at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Science Working Group will help provide astronomy community input on questions relating to the science mission of NGST, and will help disseminate information about NGST to the community.

Jonathan I. Lunine, Professor of Planetary Science and Physics and Chair of the Theoretical Astrophysics Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson is a member of the NGST Science Working group.

"The Prime Contractor Selection is absolutely crucial to the project. It is crucial to enabling us to move forward with instrument and telescope development in lockstep. The implementation of the science will require very careful coordination between the science working group, instrument builders, and telescope builder.

"Even though the launch is some time off, 2010, there is no luxury in that schedule. It will be very tight," Lunine said. "The infrared universe beckons," he told SPACE.com.

NGST represents a truly significant step forward in the astronomical exploration of the Universe, said Harley Thronson, Technology Director and Senior Science Lead for the NASA Exploration Team (NExT). NGST represents a new threshold in scientific capability, Thronson said, "to investigate the poorly-known 'dark ages' of galaxy formation in the young cosmos. Furthermore, NGST also signals a new paradigm in space telescope technology, he said.

"The dominant structures in the Universe are the galaxies. How they formed and first evolved is almost unknown to us, as it occurred so far back in time -- or, so deeply into space -- that the feeble light reaching us has been so far undetectable. This is why this period in cosmic history is referred to as "the dark ages," Thronson said.

Thronson said that NGST, with its large aperture and operating in infrared wavelengths, should allow astronomers to study the birth of galaxies, see how they evolved and learn about how they were seeded with the heavy elements necessary for life.

"The NGST will carry on the science that the Hubble Space Telescope has pioneered," said John C. Mather, NGST Project Scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "It will look farther and farther out in space and back in time, to find out how galaxies and stars and planets, including our own, developed from the primordial cataclysmic event, the Big Bang," he said.

Mather said today's selection of the team to complete the design, building, and testing of the NGST observatory is the culmination of 7 years of competition and technology development by the aerospace industry. "We are proud to be going on to this exciting new phase of the project."

Although NGST will be a technological challenge, NASA's Thronson told SPACE.com, the space observatory also constitutes a technological breakthrough.

"Its predecessor, the redoubtable Hubble Space Telescope, used cutting-edge technologies of its time - more or less twenty years ago now. These were technologies developed in many cases for telescopes intended to be operated from the surface of the Earth," Thronson said.

"Instead, NGST uses for the first time, very lightweight optics, radiative cooling, and detector systems that are sensitive to light that cannot penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. Thus, the observatory will be one of the first steps in applying technologies that actually take advantage of operating in space," Thronson concluded.