By: Max Fried

On Christmas Day of 2021, NASA officially launched its biggest and most expensive telescope into space, the James Webb Telescope. The telescope will orbit almost 1 million miles from its launching point, Earth. It will spend five to ten years (2025 - 2030ish) in space, studying how the universe’s earliest galaxies compare to later galaxies. It will also study if there is life on other planets. However, it cannot complete that until it has successfully been in space for a while. Astronomer Natalie Batalha said, “six months of pins and needles."

The James Webb Telescope was funded and manufactured by three companies. These companies were NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. The development started in 1996, when it was called the Next Generation Space Telescope. However, the name changed to the well known James Webb Telescope in September 2002. This was changed to be named after James Webb, head of NASA in the 1960s. James Webb was a key helper in the Apollo mission, which went to the moon. The James Webb Space Telescope went through many delays and setbacks. The whole telescope was redesigned in 2005. This redesign cost them $10 billion. The overall construction finally finished in 2016, and then moved on to the testing phase. Then, on Christmas Day, 2021, the testing was over, and the telescope was launched.

The James Webb Telescope is what is known as an infrared telescope. This means that it uses infrared radiation to detect various objects in space. It is able to view stars, nebulae and planets which are examples of celestial bodies. Celestial bodies are not visible to the human eye because they are not in visible light, which is seen by humans. According to NASA, infrared radiation can pass through the gas and dust, unlike the human eye. This is different from its previous telescope, the Hubble Telescope, which sees visible light, ultraviolet radiation and near-infrared radiation. Many people hope that the James Webb Telescope will be successful compared to the Hubble. Veteran astronomer Sandra Faber said the Hubble was “absolutely catastrophic.”

The James Webb Telescope has 4 goals to accomplish while on its journey. The first is to study the first stars and galaxies formed. This would be impossible to the human eye due to it being infrared (which is invisible to the eye). Therefore, the James Webb Telescope has infrared radiation, allowing it to see infrared. The second is to compare the past galaxies to the recent ones. This connects to the first goal which is studying the past galaxies. The third is to learn and study how the solar systems were formed. Visible-light telescopes cannot see astronomical dust, but a telescope using infrared radiation such as the James Webb, can see through it. NASA explained that this will be something that the Hubble could never do. The fourth and last one is that it will study other planets outside our solar system to see if other lifeforms exist. Also, it will see if a certain planet is capable of living on. As of writing this article (2/28/2022), the James Webb Telescope is orbiting an invisible point known as an Earth-Sun Lagrange point. This point is its observing spot for the four goals above.