James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope that can see infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, its high resolution and sensitivity allows it to see objects (objects) that are too old, far away or too weak for the Hubble space telescope that was brought into space in 1997. The James Webb Space Telescope will enable research in many areas of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the first (oldest) stars, the formation of the first galaxies and potentially habitable exoplanets (planets outside our own solar system).

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) led the design and development of the James Webb Space Telescope and worked with two major agencies: the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) in Maryland provided the development of telescopes, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University uses JWST and the main contractor was Northrop Grumman who therefore took care of the actual construction. The telescope is named after James E. Webb, who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs.

The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on December 25, 2021 with an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, and arrived at the pre-programmed point in space in January 2022. The first JWST image was released to the public via a press conference on July 11, 2022.

JWST's first mirror consists of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-plated beryllium, which together form a mirror with a diameter of 6.5 metres, so that is much larger compared to Hubble's 2.4 m. This gives JWST a light-collecting area of about 25 square metres, about six times that of Hubble. This allows the JWST to capture much weaker light. The telescope must be kept extremely cold, below 50 K (-223 ° C; -370 ° F), so that the infrared light emitted by the telescope itself does not interfer the collected light. It is deployed in an orbit around the sun near the so-called sun-earth L 2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where its five-layer solar shield protects it from warming by the sun, the earth and the moon.

The first designs for the telescope, then called the Next Generation Space Telescope, began in 1996. In 1999, two preliminary studies were commissioned, for a possible launch in 2007 and a budget of $1 billion. The program was plagued by huge cost overruns and delays; a major redesign in 2005 led to the current approach, with construction being completed in 2016 for a total of $10 billion. The high stakes of the launch and the complexity (complexity) of the telescope were noticed by the media, scientists and engineers.

The device had to be designed and made in such a way that it would fit into the rocket. The mirror segments could be folded in and arrived in the room they could unfold again.

Because the James Webb telescope orbits the Earth like an artificial moon, you can call it a satellite.