European Extremely Large Telescope given go-ahead

&#62;Its sensitivity and resolution should make it possible to image directly rocky planets beyond our Solar System.<p>This is unprecedented, right? I have been wondering for a while if such a thing is or will be possible. I assumed the distances were simply too great.<p>I see now that it is possible to directly image gas giants, but not to my knowledge small rocky planets.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_imaging#Direct_imaging" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_imaging#Direct_imaging</a>

How will this compare to the Square Kilometer Array?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array</a>

I wish the Terrestrial Planet Mapper and Terrestrial Planet Imager had been funded. It was proposing to fly an armada of nulling interferometers in space using optical interferometry capable of imaging planets around other stars at 25x25 pixel resolution.

I love these kind of naming conventions. I wonder what the next one in the series will be called and if FLT has been used yet.