Stuff like this is just incredible. It also should make someone stop and think... there might be some major issues on Earth, but in the scope of things they should really be insignificant, or shouldn't be issues at all. There's an entire universe out there yet most people still act like the solar system revolves around the Earth.
Something I find amazing and am dying to see launched in my lifetime is the James Wedd Space telescope. Hubble was the best in technology for the late 80's when it was finally launched in 1990. But the technology it uses is outdated and horrible limited by todays standards. This amongst other reasons is why Hubble can't actually see the edge of the Universe or attempt to look beyond it.
The Hames Webb Space Telescope was designed to do exactly that. Not only does it have a mirror that is 6x the size of Hubble's but it is designed to operate in the infrared spectrum as well, and comes equiped with additional shielding to cut down on image noise. Not only should we be able to observe objects much further out but we will be able to inspect objects much closer in that Hubble simply wasn't able to do in detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
My only regret is that the James Webb Space Telescope will be highly sought after for obersvations, and yet there's only one of them to go around. Mostly though, is that even the James Webb Telescope doesn't have
quite the resolution required to give us detailed photographic images of extrasolar planets.
As of this month we've found 344 of them, but because of land-based and Hubble's own telescope limitations they are all huge planets that dwarf Jupiter. Many astronomers seem to agree that it will take the successor to the James Webb Telescope before we have to technology to observe planets of Earth's size.
