An artist’s view of the James Webb Space Telescope
Nasa is preparing to launch a space telescope that will see further into the Universe than anything else ever built.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken 30 years and $10bn (£7.5bn) to develop, and is being described as one of the grand scientific endeavours of the 21st Century.
The telescope will be able to see just about anything in the sky. However, it has one overriding objective - to see the light coming from the very first stars to shine in the Universe.
These pioneer stars are thought to have switched on about 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, or a little over 13.5 billion years ago.
Webb will be picking out groupings of these stars. They are so far away, their light - even though it moves at 300,000km (186,000 miles) per second - will have taken billions of years to travel the cosmos.
It should be possible for Webb to see (or least detect a faint glow from) the moment when the darkness ended and those first stars flickered into life.
When the Universe was formed in the Big Bang, it contained only three chemical elements - hydrogen, helium and a smattering of lithium.
Every other chemical element - including those vital to life, such as carbon and oxygen - had to be forged, or “manufactured”, by nuclear reactions at the centre of stars.
Webb will help us understand the origins of everything we see around us, and how we came to be.
With all the other associated equipment, Webb is about the size of a tennis court. It’s so big, in fact, it has to be folded to fit inside its launch rocket.
But the key aspect of Webb is that it is tuned to detect light that Hubble cannot - in the infrared. This light is invisible to the human eye, but it’s the type of light in which the glow from the most distant objects in the Universe will show up.
At the moment, Webb - named after James E Webb, the Nasa boss who oversaw the Apollo Moon-landing project - is scheduled to go into orbit on Wednesday 22 December.
It will be launched on a European Ariane-5 rocket from French Guiana. The European Space Agency is a partner on the project, and has agreed to take on the responsibility of getting Webb into space.
Webb is easily the most valuable payload ever put on an Ariane. Fortunately, the rocket has a reputation for being very dependable.
The rocket will hurl the telescope about one million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth.
At that distance, it can make observations free from the occasional shadowing effects it would experience if operating closer to our world.
Obviously, it will have to be commissioned - it it doesn’t work then it’s a disaster - unlike Hubble, it can’t be serviced or repaired - it’s too far out in space …
Engineers completed final checks on Friday before closing the observatory behind the nose cone of its Ariane rocket. Everything is on track now for a lift-off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana next Friday at 09:20 local time (12:20 GMT).
Engineers had put the launch on hold for a few days while they investigated a troublesome communications cable carrying data from Webb to ground-support equipment. Once this was fixed, the final “aliveness” tests on the telescope’s subsystems could be run.
Arianespace, the French company that manages operations in Kourou, will hold a launch readiness review on Tuesday. Assuming no issues come up, the Ariane vehicle, with Webb bolted on top, will then roll out to the pad.
The rocket will have a half-hour window in which to get off the ground on Friday. If bad weather or minor technical issues intervene, there are launch opportunities on 25 and 26 December, after which teams would have to stand down for a day to allow production of hydrogen and oxygen propellants at the spaceport to catch up.
The Ariane carries a number of modifications for the upcoming flight. In particular, special vents have been put in the sides of the nose cone fairing to ensure there is an even loss of pressure during the climb to orbit. This will ensure there is no abrupt change in environment that might damage the telescope when the fairing panels are discarded.
The rocket will throw Webb on to a path that will take it to an observing station some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. This journey should last a month, during which time the telescope will unfold its 6.5m-diameter primary mirror and the tennis court-sized shield intended to protect its observations of the cosmos from the Sun’s light and heat.
NASA will provide coverage of prelaunch, launch, and postlaunch activities for the James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space science telescope.
Webb is targeted to launch at 7:20 a.m. EST Friday, Dec. 24, on an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America.
Live launch coverage in English will begin at 6 a.m. on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. The public can also watch live on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, and Daily Motion. NASA also will offer a launch broadcast in Spanish beginning at 6:30 a.m. on the agency’s website and Spanish-language social media accounts. NASA will hold a prelaunch media briefing at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 21, and a postlaunch news conference approximately 30 minutes after the live launch broadcast ends on Friday, Dec. 24.
Thank you, Omah! I think that’s around late morning/lunchtime UK time, so I am definitely tuning in for that! (Even if it was the middle of the night, I would still watch )
The observatory was lifted skyward by an Ariane rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
Its flight to orbit lasted just under half an hour, with a signal confirming a successful outcome picked up by a ground antenna at Malindi in Kenya.
“Lift off from a tropical rainforest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the Universe,” said American space agency (Nasa) TV commentator Rob Navias at the moment the rocket left the Earth.
Thirty days after it was launched, the James Webb telescope has arrived at the position in space where it will observe the Universe.
The Lagrange Point 2, as it’s known, is a million miles (1.5 million km) from Earth on its nightside.
Webb was finally nudged into an orbit around this location thanks to a short, five-minute thruster burn.
Controllers back on Earth will now spend the coming months tuning the telescope to get it ready for science.
Key tasks include switching on the observatory’s four instruments, and also focusing its mirrors - in particular, its 6.5m-wide segmented primary reflector.
Just came across a really good explanation about the L2 Lagrange points in space and how the James Webb space craft will actually be kept slightly inside the L2 point so that it doesn’t get lost for ever. Quite fascinating.
omg wot a crap awful production so 1. you expect us to listen to that and 2, understand it ?? - forget it man you are all jumping the gun - why don’t you wait until it is functioning well??
