A little while ago, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched atop an Ariane 5 ECA rocket from the Kourou base, French Guiana. After about 27 minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and began its journey to the area known as L2, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. During the journey, its structure will be deployed and instrument tests and calibrations will begin. That’s a long preparation phase that will continue even after the telescope has reached its destination. The launch has put a strain on the possibilities of one of the most powerful and reliable rockets available but was only the first in a series of critical steps required to begin the work of this extremely sophisticated instrument.
Considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb is the result of a project that began even before Hubble’s launch and was modified over the years. It’s a NASA project with some contributions by ESA, which managed the launch, and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The long design and development phase, with the inevitable difficulties and a substantial budget increase, which eventually approached $ 11 billion, have been the subject of discussion and controversy over the years.
With its giant 6.5-meter primary mirror and instruments, the James Webb Space Telescope aims to take various astronomical studies to a new level. Its sensitivity falls above all in the near-infrared with detections possible only outside the Earth’s atmosphere, which blocks those frequencies. In some ways, it’s the successor to the Spitzer Space Telescope, whose mission ended on January 30, 2020.
The James Webb Space Telescope will be used for cosmological studies related to the first galaxies and the first stars born in the universe and to the mystery of dark energy. Other telescopes have the primary purpose of looking for exoplanets and many others are used to study the known ones but the James Webb should be able to offer more information on them offering new possibilities to investigate their atmospheres and their potential to host life forms. The James Webb will offer a wide range of possible astronomical research.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s scientific mission will be carried out from an area close to the so-called Lagrange point L2, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. It will not orbit exactly at that point but will circle around it in a so-called halo orbit. Its structure is too large for any current rocket, so it was folded up and will be deployed in the first few days of its journey. It will take about a month to reach L2 and it will take about five more months to complete all the complex work of testing and calibrating its instruments. There will be various critical phases but if all goes well it will be a short time thinking about the many years it took to launch it.
