Stage: Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope
Date: December 25, 2021
Where: Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guiana
WHO: Scientists from NASA, European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency
On a cloudy winter day in the Amazon jungle, the shuttle launched into space – and forever changed our view of the Universe.
After about a month, he achieved his goal. orbital parking in spacea gravitationally stable Lagrange point located 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away, in perfect equilibrium between the gravity of the Earth and the Sun. The telescope will radiate amazing photos first in July 2022. And the stream of data it has since sent back has changed our understanding of the cosmos.
JWST has played such an important role in part because it provides a glimpse into the “cosmic dawn,” the period several hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first stars began to twinkle.
“The James Webb Space Telescope has proven its ability to see 98% of the way back to Big bang“,” Peter JacobsenAssociate Professor in the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, formerly told Live Science in an email.
However, Webb, which was first conceived at Lockheed Martin in the late 1990s, almost didn't start at all. The now landmark $10 billion project was woefully over budget, plagued by years of delays and riddled with “stupid mistakes.”
This was partly because at the time of its launch it was the most complex telescope ever built.
It took longer more than 20,000 engineers and hundreds of scientists design, build and launch an eye into the sky. This 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) tall mirror had to be folded into a honeycomb shape to be lifted onto the rocket and then deployed into space. However, despite being foldable, it also had to be so smooth that if it were the size of a continent, “there would be no hill or valley higher than ankle-high.” according to Quanta magazine.
To see the earliest eras of cosmic history, Webb needed infrared vision. This is because the ancient light was stretched, or redshifted, into infrared wavelengths as it moved through spacetime. On Earth, humans and all other living things produce heat in the form of infrared radiation, which would drown out the weak infrared signals of the most distant, ancient starlight. So JWST needed to be sent into the cold darkness of outer space to use its infrared instruments.
As soon as JWST began photographing space, destroying existing models of the Universe. This quickly confirmed the Hubble tension – the discrepancy between the rate at which the universe is expanding depending on where and what astronomers measure. He found hints of potential life-supporting atmosphere enveloping distant exoplanets. And he discovered stunningly bright galaxies and Seemingly “impossible” black holes from the dawn of time. All these clues point to a new understanding of the universe.
Some of the questions that JWST raises are: for example, is there life on other planets?it will likely not be able to respond within its planned 10-year service life. But future telescopes, such as those currently in operation Vera K. Rubin Observatoryintended to create a “movie about the universe” in real time; the newly built Nancy Grace Rome Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2027 and designed to address questions about dark matter and energy; Extremely Large Telescope, due to turn on in 2029; or the recently announced Habitable Worlds Observatory, which could become operational in the 2030s, could begin to answer the questions Webb raises.
