It took about two decades to develop the world's largest space telescope, NASA’s James Webb Telescope. And right now there is a very active and quite political competition going on in the scientific community about designing the next generation of space telescopes. Those telescopes will discover incredible things that are waiting to be known.

I talk with Dr. Klaus Pontoppidan from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory about his concept for a far infrared telescope and the future of space telescopes more generally. He calls the process of designing future space telescopes “mysterious”, “exciting” and something that even most scientists don’t really understand.