Cayenne, Dec. 25 (BUS): The world’s largest space telescope and the world’s most powerful telescope set out on Saturday on a high-risk mission to spot light from the first stars and galaxies and search the universe for hints of life.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope flew from French Guiana on the northeastern coast of South America, riding a European Ariane rocket into the Christmas morning sky, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The $10 billion observatory blasted off toward its destination a million miles (1.6 million km) away, or more than four times beyond the moon. It will take another month and five months to get there before the infrared eyes are ready to begin scanning the universe.
First, the telescope’s enormous mirror and sun cover must open; It was folded in origami style to fit the cone of the rocket’s nose. Otherwise, the observatory would not be able to look back in 13.7 billion years as expected, within only 100 million years of the Big Bang of the universe.
“It will give us a better understanding of our universe and our place in it: who we are, what we are, and the eternal search,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said earlier this week.
But he cautioned: “When you want a big reward, you usually have to take a big risk.”
The long-awaited James Webb was designed to be the successor to the old Hubble Space Telescope, after a NASA administrator during the 1960s. NASA has partnered with European and Canadian space agencies to build and launch the new 7-ton telescope, which has been operated by thousands of people from 29 countries since the 1990s.
With the Christmas launch period and a global spike in COVID-19 cases, there were fewer spectators at the French Guiana launch site than expected. Nelson pulled out with a congressional delegation and several contractors who worked on the telescope.
Across the world, astronomers have been eagerly awaiting to see Webb finally fly after years of setbacks. Last-minute technical hurdles bumped into the launch for nearly a week, then gale-force winds drove him to Christmas.
Inside Launch Control, there were a few Santa hats.
“We are launching for Humanity this morning,” Arianespace CEO Stefan Israel said minutes before takeoff. “After Webb, we will never see the sky the same way.”
Telescope masterpiece: A gold-plated mirror over 21 feet (6.5 meters) wide.
Protecting the observatory is a five-layer sun visor, which is vital to keeping a light-gathering mirror and heat-sensing infrared detectors at subzero temperatures. At 70 feet by 46 feet (21 meters by 14 meters), it is the size of a tennis court.
If all goes well, the sun visor will open three days after take-off, taking at least five days to unfold and lock in place.
Then, the mirror parts should open like table leaves with foliage, 12 or so days into the flight.
Altogether, hundreds of editing mechanisms would have to function—ideally—for the telescope to be successful. “Like anything we’ve done before,” said NASA Program Administrator Greg Robinson.
Retired astronaut Stephen Hawley is more nervous on Webb than he was with Hubble, who launched it into orbit from the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. That’s because Webb would be too far from rescue, as was necessary when Hubble turned out to be a blurry view from a faulty mirror.
Spacewalk repairs by astronauts turned Hubble into a beloved marvel that revolutionized humanity’s understanding of the universe, revisiting 13.4 billion years ago. Now Webb has to get much closer to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and his infrared vision is more exciting and farther-reaching than Hubble’s at visible wavelengths and shorter ultraviolet light.
NASA shoots 10 years of operational life from Webb. The engineers deliberately left the fuel tank to reach the top by visiting the spacecraft, if and when the technology became available.
“I would have never imagined that it would still be so powerful after nearly 32 years,” Hawley, who is now a professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, said in an email when Hubble was launched. “I hope in 32 years we’ll be able to say that the JWST was, too.”
M