While Hubble can see back 400 million years after the Big Bang, Webb can possibly look back 100 million years after the event. Scientists built the telescope to see in infrared and it can look further into space, and thus further back in time, than anything previously constructed. The James Webb Telescope has a mirror roughly six times the collecting size of Hubble’s-and it is 100 times more sensitive. The telescope’s "spectacular images have captured the imagination for decades, and will continue to inspire humanity for years to come," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., in a statement. The Hubble launched into low-Earth orbit in 1990 and in the three decades since has been sending stunning images of stars and galaxies unlike anything seen before. The cooperative project between the space agencies of the United States, Canada and Europe will be able to do things its famed predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, couldn't.
“I truly see JWST as one such monument of our times.” “Remarkable enduring achievements of human hand and mind, be it the temples of Mahabalipuram, the pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall or the Sistine Chapel have all taken time and expense,” Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale, told the New York Times. But scientists say the investment in time and money will be worth the wait and cost, if the craft performs as expected. And this year alone, the telescope was delayed several times. House of Representatives even threatened to cancel the craft. More than a decade has passed since the telescope was first expected to launch, a delay accompanied by an escalating price tag that soared roughly $9 billion above budget. The Christmas gift to the world will ditch its box and open up slowly on its own during a multi-step, month-long journey to its orbit in outer space.
ET the James Webb Space Telescope, a scientific gift folded up and wrapped in a rocket, took off from its launch site in the South American country of French Guiana. In a newly released report, Webb’s commissioning team said that while the mirrors and sunshields on the telescope are “expected to slowly degrade from micrometeoroid impacts,” the impact to one specific segment, known as C3, “exceeded prelaunch expectations of damage for a single micrometeoroid.In an incremental sign the universe rewards the diligent behavior and patience of astronomers out to study it, conditions cleared enough this Christmas morning for the launch of the biggest, most powerful and most expensive telescope ever. It’s comprised of 18 segments, one of which was smacked by th e bigger than anticipated micrometeoroid in May. Micrometeoroids are fragments of asteroids that are usually smaller than a grain of sand, according to NASA.Īt the time, Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explained it was known that Webb would have to survive the harsh environment of space, including micrometeoroids.
While experts say the impact was small, it has prompted further investigation.Īt 21 feet, Webb’s gold-plated, flower-shaped mirror is the biggest and most sensitive ever sent into space. (NEXSTAR) – A micrometeoroid caused “significant uncorrectable damage” to NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Telescope, a new report explains.
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