The European Space Agency announced it has set aside $200 million of its science budget to collaborate on building the Next Generation Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The proposed $900 million instrument will be launched in 2007, equipped with an 8-m primary mirror that will produce high-resolution images at visible and IR wavelengths.
Unlike Hubble, which orbits Earth, the telescope will observe space from a position on the Earth-sun axis about 2 million km farther from the sun than Earth. The collaboration agreement on Hubble between NASA and the European agency will end in 2001.