Eye In the Sky
There’s been a heck of a lot going on in the space industry in recent years, but the most important, exciting and frankly, awe-inspiring development in recent years might be what’s going on right now with the James Webb telescope.
For those of you out there who have had their focus on the goings on at ground level and haven’t been paying too much attention to what we’ve had going on amongst the stars, the James Webb Space Telescope is essentially a new, improved version of the famous Hubble Space Telescope, which has floated in orbit since the early 90’s, and will operate as our lens new to the depths of the universe. The product of decades of meticulous craft and expertise (and over US$10 billion worth of funding by NASA and the European and Canadian Space Agency’s, respectively), the James Webb promises to allow us here on Earth to see corners of our galaxy never before possible, as it orbits from a point observation over 1.5 million kilometres from the spot with which it launched from.
As the successor to the already game changing Hubble, the James Webb will look to reach areas that the Hubble could not, in part due to a comparatively much larger mirror (6.5m vs 2.4m diameter). The other key difference is that the James Webb is an infrared telescope, which allows it the ability to see objects that are more highly ‘redshifted’ due to their distance.
As with most operations that involve leaving the comforting boundary of our atmosphere, getting the revolutionary telescope to its final resting place in one piece was far from a formality, and NASA scientists had identified over 300 different ‘single point failures’ (basically, things that could go wrong) that could potentially render decades of hard work all for naught. Over one month after its Christmas Day launch from French Guiana, however, and the 6,500 kg telescope has miraculously reached its intended destination at Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange Point (a cool 1.5 million kilometres from Earth) without barely a hitch.
Scientists down here on Earth have now begun the complex process of commissioning the telescope, remotely activating the telescopes myriad of instruments, aligning its mirrors and a organising a collection of other preparation processes, a period that is believed could take several months to complete. The end results, if all goes according to plan, could provide some of the most fantastic and significant discoveries about the origins of our solar system and what lies amongst the great beyond in human history.
Among the outlined objectives of the telescope; the use of infrared vision to essentially peer ‘back in time’ to observe the formation of the first stars and galaxies ever to exist. So yeah, I guess you could say it’s kind of a big deal.