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The world’s largest and most powerful space telescope rocketed on Saturday in a high-stakes quest to see light from the first stars and galaxies and find clues to life across the universe.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope took to the skies on Christmas morning aboard a European Ariane rocket from French Guiana, off the northeast coast of South America.
The $10 billion observatory blasted off 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from its target, or more than four times the moon. It will take one month to get there and another five months before his infrared eyes are ready to begin scanning the cosmos.
First, the telescope’s huge mirror and sun shield need to be turned on; they were folded in origami style to fit in the nose cone of the rocket. Otherwise, the observatory would not be able to go back 13.7 billion years, as expected, within just 100 million years of the Big Bang that formed the universe.
“This will give us a better understanding of our universe and our place in it: who we are, what we are, the endless quest,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said earlier this week.
But he warned: “When you want a big reward, you usually have to take a big risk.”
Designed as the successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb is named after NASA’s administrator in the 1960s. NASA has partnered with European and Canadian space agencies to build and launch the new 7-tonne telescope, which has worked with thousands of people from 29 countries since the 1990s.
There were fewer spectators than expected at the French Guiana launch site, with the launch falling around Christmas and a global rise in COVID-19 cases. Nelson bowed with a congressional delegation and several other contractors working on the telescope.
Astronomers around the world couldn’t wait to see Webb finally fly after years of mishaps. Last-minute technical hurdles disrupted the launch for almost a week, after which strong winds pushed it into Christmas. Inside the Launch Control was some Santa hat.
“We’re launching for humanity this morning,” said Stephane Israel, CEO of Arianespace, minutes before takeoff. “After Webb, we will never see the sky the same way.”
The flamboyant piece of the telescope: a gold-plated mirror over 21 feet by 6.5 meters.
Protecting the observatory is a thin, five-layer sunshade that is vital to keeping the light-gathering mirror and heat-sensitive infrared detectors in sub-zero temperatures. 70 feet by 46 feet (21 meters by 14 meters), the size of a tennis court.
If all goes well, the sunshade will open three days after takeoff, taking at least five days to open and snap into place. The mirror segments should then unfold like the leaves of a leafy tabletop, 12 days or more into flight.
In total, hundreds of release mechanisms must work perfectly for the telescope to be successful. “It’s unlike anything we’ve done before,” said Greg Robinson, NASA program director.
Retired astronaut-astronomer Steven Hawley is more stressed out on Webb than he was for Hubble, which he launched into orbit from the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. This is because Webb is too far away to recover, as was necessary when Hubble turned out to be blurry. seeing through an imperfect mirror.
Spacewalk repairs by astronauts turned Hubble into a beloved marvel that revolutionized humanity’s understanding of the universe and took their eyes back to 13.4 billion years ago. Now it’s up to Webb to get even closer to the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, whose infrared vision is sharper and broader than Hubble’s at shorter visible and ultraviolet wavelengths.
NASA is shooting for 10 years of operational life from Webb. Engineers visited the spacecraft if and whenever such technology became available, deliberately leaving the fuel tank accessible for refueling.
“I would never have believed it would still be going strong almost 32 years later,” Hawley, now professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, when it launched Hubble, said in an email. “Hopefully in 32 years we can say that JWST has succeeded too.”
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