Once in space, the telescope will wait 35 days after launch before aligning its mirrors to focus on faraway galaxies. To keep the mirrors cold, the team will send the telescope into deep space fitted with sun shields to protect its mirrors from the sun's heat. If it's not at this temperature, the telescope will detect its own heat with the infrared sensors and blur out other galaxies. The segmented mirrors that weigh 46 pounds each also needed to fold origami-style so that they could fit inside the rocket and later bloom open once it reaches its destination, per NPR.Įngineers need to keep the mirrors at negative 364 degrees Fahrenheit to see galaxies in infrared. To achieve this, researchers built the hexagon-shaped mirrors out of beryllium, a light metal that will not warp at various temperatures. The JWST will observe infrared light, whereas the Hubble telescope primarily observes ultraviolet light and visual elements of the electromagnetic spectrum.Ĭreating a giant mirror that is not only large enough to peer deep into the mysteries of space but also light and cold enough to launch into orbit took a lot of planning and engineering. Light from either a galaxy or a star will enter the telescope and bounce off its four cameras and sensors. The telescope will work similarly to a satellite dish. In total, JWST's mirrors can collect more than six times more light than the Hubble telescope can, according to The Conversation. The mirrors are also lined with a microscopically thin layer of gold which helps reflect infrared light. The larger the mirror's area, the more light it can collect and the more it can see-sort of like increasing a camera's aperture. Scientists decided the mirror needed to be this long because a telescope's sensitivity, or how much it can see, is related to the size of the mirror. The observatory will also use a colossal mirror consisting of 18 hexagonal mirrors assembled into a honeycomb shape that spans just over 21 feet across, New Scientist reports. To observe the far reaches of space, JWST will use four cameras and several sensor systems to collect data, writes Marcia Rieke, a JWST astronomer who worked on the Near Infrared Camera aboard the telescope, for The Conversation. states have worked on the telescope in the past 25 years. A team of 1,200 scientists, technicians, and engineers from 14 countries and more than 28 U.S. "Webb will be able to see galaxies as they looked a couple hundred million years after the Big Bang," NASA astrophysicist Jane Rigby tells NPR.įirst envisioned in 1996, construction of the enormous space observatory has cost a total of $10 billion. Once launched into space, the observatory will travel to a location one million miles from Earth. From there, it will help astronomers understand how young galaxies form, peer through clouds to examine how stars take shape, study exoplanets, and observe nearby celestial objects, including planets within our own solar system, reports New Scientist. As the Hubble Space Telescope's successor, JWST is designed to complement and expand Hubble's discoveries with its extended wavelength coverage and improved light sensitivity, NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce. The orbiting infrared observatory will be the largest telescope ever launched into space. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be launched into space on December 18 aboard a European Space Agency (ESA) Ariane 5 rocket, reports Abigail Beall for New Scientist. NASA has set a luanch date for their newest, most powerful telescope.
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