wdross Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado

Luckily, no, it will not be obsolete! Even if curved sensors sweep the market, lenses will still work on them - just not like they do now.

al lehman Loc: San jose, ca.

I worked on the Hubble Telescope at Lockheed, Sunnyvale, Ca. I had responsibility for the power system and was in the high bay for thousands of hours. We had to uniform up as it was a sterile environment in the highbay. The issue with the lens was ultimately due to an error in the development calculations. When you launch into space, the hardware has to acclimate for several weeks due to environmental variations. It was only after the telescope actually completed it's acclimation cycle that the error was discovered. One of the most interesting projects I had the opportunity to work on. What is amazing is that Hubble is still working. Congrats to the reliability engineers.

Typically with large lenses, the glass is heated at relatively high temps and then slowly cooled over months to prevent physical distortion of the glass. There are reasons why a Canon 600mm lens cost over $10K.