James Webb Space Telescope Launch Image: NASA/Chris Gunn The first glimpse of the James Webb Space Telescope during the launch. the likes of which we can only dream of right now,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, tells The Verge. “We are, without a doubt, going to see surprises. And perhaps, we’ll see some things we were not expecting along the way. On top of that, JWST will observe every kind of cosmic object we can possibly see, from distant alien worlds and black holes, galaxies, supernovae, and violent collisions between dense stars. Astronomers believe that the Big Bang, which sparked the expansion of our Universe, occurred 13.8 billion years ago. So when JWST sees these distant clusters, it will be seeing them as they were 13.6 billion years ago, right after the Universe as we know it came into being. With a gold-plated mirror stretching 21 feet, or 6.5 meters wide, JWST will be able to gather infrared light from galaxies that has crossed 13.6 billion light-years through space and time. If it all works out, JWST will become one of the most important tools we’ve ever hadīut if it all works out, JWST will become one of the most important tools we’ve ever had for peering into the distant recesses of space. There are hundreds of steps involved and plenty of moments where one bad deployment could jeopardize the entire mission. Along the way, the spacecraft will be slowly unfolding and reshaping itself to reach its final configuration, a process that is absolutely necessary for the telescope to observe the cosmos. Over the next month, the spacecraft will be journeying out to its final location 1 million miles from Earth.
Though the initial trip to space may have been successful, there’s still a risky journey ahead for the James Webb Space Telescope, also known as JWST. “From a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the Universe,” Rob Navias, NASA’s announcer on the agency’s livestream, said at liftoff. Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket launches with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope onboard, Saturday, December 25, 2021, from the ELA-3 Launch Zone of Europe’s Spaceport at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.
0 kommentar(er)
