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The James Webb Space Telescope was sent aloft on Christmas Day in 2021. It has changed the way we see the universe.(Image credit: Getty Images)ShareShare by:
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Important Event: Launch of the James Webb Space Telescope
When: December 25, 2021
Where: Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, in French Guiana
Who: Scientists from NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency
On a murky winter day, deep in the Amazon rainforest, a spacecraft soared into the heavens — and permanently altered our perception of the cosmos.
Approximately one month afterward, it arrived at its orbital station in space, a gravitationally-stable Lagrange point situated 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away, maintaining perfect equilibrium between Earth and the sun’s pull. The telescope would transmit its initial, amazing images in July 2022. Since then, the constant stream of information it has provided has revolutionized our comprehension of the universe.
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JWST has been so essential, partially because it can observe the “cosmic dawn,” a time period several hundred million years after the Big Bang when the earliest stars started to light up.
“The James Webb Space Telescope has demonstrated its capability to see 98% of the way back to the Big Bang,” Peter Jakobsen, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, conveyed to Live Science via email in the past.
Nevertheless, Webb, which was initially conceptualized at Lockheed Martin in the late 1990s, nearly didn’t launch at all. The now-famous, $10 billion endeavor experienced disastrous budget overruns, several years of delays, and was hampered by “foolish errors.”
This was partly due to the fact that at the time of its launch, it was unequivocally the most intricate telescope ever constructed.
It required the combined efforts of over 20,000 engineers and hundreds of scientists to conceive, construct, and launch the eye in the sky. That 21.3 feet (6.5 meter) mirror had to be compressed into a honeycomb configuration for launch on a rocket, and then extended once it reached space. Yet, despite its folding design, it also had to be so uniform that if it were the size of a continent, “it wouldn’t have a hill or valley exceeding ankle height,” as per Quanta Magazine.
This striking image of the Cosmic Cliffs was the first one unveiled by JWST. Within it, one can observe a wealth of stars during their initial phases of star formation, a hectic period spanning between 50,000 and 100,000 years.
To witness the universe’s primordial epochs, Webb needed to possess infrared vision. This is because ancient light has been stretched, or red-shifted, into infrared wavelengths during its passage across space-time. On Earth, humans and all other organisms emit heat in the form of infrared radiation, which would overshadow the delicate infrared signals from the most remote, ancient starlight. Consequently, JWST had to be transported into the frigid darkness of space to utilize its infrared instruments.
As soon as JWST began capturing images of the cosmos, it rapidly started to challenge our established models of the universe. It promptly validated the Hubble tension — the inconsistency in the universe’s expansion rates based on the location and method of astronomical measurement. It has detected signs of potential life-supporting atmospheres surrounding distant exoplanets. Furthermore, it has identified remarkably radiant galaxies and seemingly “unfeasible” black holes at the beginning of time. Together, these indications are leading to novel understandings of the universe.
Some of the questions JWST is bringing up, such as whether other planets are habitable, it likely won’t be able to resolve during its intended 10-year mission. Nonetheless, future telescopes — for instance, the currently functioning Vera C. Rubin Observatory, intended to generate a real-time “movie of the universe”; the recently finished Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2027 to address inquiries about dark matter and energy; the Extremely Large Telescope, scheduled to activate in 2029; and the recently declared Habitable Worlds Observatory, potentially becoming operational in the 2030s — may initiate the process of answering the questions that Webb is posing.
TOPICSJames Webb Space TelescopeOn this day in science history
Tia GhoseSocial Links NavigationEditor-in-Chief (Premium)
Tia holds the role of editor-in-chief (premium) and formerly held the positions of managing editor and senior writer for Live Science. Her work has been published in outlets like Scientific American, Wired.com, and Science News, among others. She possesses a master’s degree in bioengineering from the University of Washington, a graduate credential in science writing from UC Santa Cruz, and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Tia was a member of a team at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel responsible for publishing the Empty Cradles series regarding preterm births, which garnered multiple awards, including the 2012 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.
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