James Web Space Telescope 🔭

On 24^th December, 2021, humans placed their new weapon before Christmas Eve into the space. Dedicated to James E. Webb, who served as NASA administrator from 1961 to 1968 and had a significant role in the Apollo program. Webb launched Christmas morning from Courou, French Guiana, on South America's northeast coast, a spaceport operated by the European Space Agency. This was probably the best gift to the Humanity and Science by the scientists. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is more powerful than its predecessors, and will be able to see much further into space, enabling us to find distant planets in distant galaxies.

The search for an atmosphere that could support life will even be made possible with the James Webb Space Telescope. It is more powerful than Hubble Telescope. As part of the project, NASA is working with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to fund the infrared telescope Webb. The telescope will orbit 1.5 million kilometers in orbit and weigh 6 metric tons.

It has many new technological advances, including a deployable sunshield and a folding segmented mirror. There are many powerful telescopes on the earth but not in space. Now that the most powerful telescope built by humans has been launched, the new era of space exploration has already begun. 

The successor of Hubble is 100 times more powerful. It has bigger mirrors than Hubble and also has a location advantage since it is 1.5 million kilometres away from the earth.  James Webb removed all the drawbacks (can’t say that!) of the hubble telescope. Hubble telescope enabled us to see teenage galaxies whereas the James Webb Telescope will now enable us to see new born galaxies. So I can say that, it’s a kind of Time Machine! Additionally, researchers will be able to observe a range of asteroids, some of which have moons, to learn more about our solar system's makeup and history. This will enable us to learn more about our universe and also will help us to add on to our current space knowledge.

With the help of James Webb Space Telescope we can now have the map of the universe. Since it can penetrate the universe via infrared. Newly born stars and other astronomical bodies are hidden behind dust that absorbs visible light, but with the help of JWST infrared can penetrate that dust. Hubble was not designed mainly to hunt another earth but James Webb is mainly designed to hunt the next earth.

After the launch of JWST, we may now need to rewrite our Science and other textbooks!

It’s a coup of Technology! Webb's primary mirror is 6.5 meters (21 feet 4 inches) across; a mirror this large has never before been launched into space. It is made up of 18 hexagonal mirror segments measuring 4.3 feet (1.32 m) in diameter. The size of this enormous sunshield is about 70 by 47 feet (21 by 14 meters) when deployed, or approximately the size of a tennis court.

So let’s see how this Gem in the Space changes our viewpoint to see towards the Sky!