Takeoff should take place “as soon as possible, with the launch window starting at 12:20 GMT, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Wednesday. According to NASA, the window will be 32 minutes.”
The James Webb Telescope will follow in the footsteps of the mythical Hubble, seeking to clarify two important questions: “Where did we come from?” and “Are we alone in the universe?” – summed up NASA astrophysicist Amber Strawn at a press conference in early December.
Conceived in 1989 and named “JWST” (James Webb Space Telescope, after the former director of NASA), the telescope was developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Its development was overshadowed by many problems that delayed release for years and quadrupled its initial cost to $ 10 billion.
The device was manufactured in the United States and will be launched in Kourou, French Guiana, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket.
– Revolution –
“We are very excited, we have been waiting for this moment for a long time,” Pierre Ferruil, one of the scientists in charge of the telescope project at ESA, explained to AFP.
For Ferruit, as for many other scientists and engineers, this mission represents a career achievement.
The watch list is growing and the ESA has already received over 1,000 requests in its first year alone.
For the scientist, this shows that “the questions with which Webb was created are still relevant” 20 years later. ”
This “shared observatory” is unmatched in both size and complexity, equipped with a huge mirror made up of 18 hexagonal segments. Its diameter is 6.5 meters, which is three times that of the Hubble.
The mirror is so large that it had to be folded like origami to fit on the ship that will take you into space. Once you reach your destination, the placement operation is extremely delicate, as your umbrella is the size of a tennis court.
This “giant” will be placed in the orbit of the Sun, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, far surpassing Hubble, located “only” 600 kilometers from our planet.
Webb’s location, known as Lagrange 2, was carefully chosen. Its position allows “Earth, Sun and Moon to be on the same side of your umbrella, which allows you to stay in the dark and in extreme cold,” explains Pierre Ferruy.
Thus, the telescope will be protected from any interference, which is a sine qua non of its great mission: to track the invisible world of infrared rays, a spectrum to which Hubble has no access.
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