Science and Technology

Webb telescope promises new frontiers in space exploration

by Elijah Salazar

July 25, 2022

Social media went abuzz on July 12th as the first official images of the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released by the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The first image, a deep field photo showing an endless number of galaxies in the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster, immediately made waves online after being revealed in a briefing graced by US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As of this writing, the image, the highest resolution image of the universe ever captured, already has over a million likes and reacts across NASA’s social media platforms.

NASA further released images of an open cluster in the Carina Nebula, the compact galaxy group Stephan’s Quintet, the Southern Ring Nebula, and an analysis of the atmosphere of a gas giant exoplanet 1120 light years away from Earth, which suggested the presence of water in the distant world.

US Vice President and National Space Council Chair Kamala Harris lauded the success of the James Webb Space Telescope’s launch. “This telescope is one of humanity’s great engineering achievements,” she said.

After 25 years in the planning stages and multiple delays due to cost and budget issues that ballooned to a whopping 9.7 billion US dollars before launch, the JWST was finally launched on Christmas Day 2021.

With a mass, only half that of its predecessor, the famed Hubble Space Telescope, Webb also has a much larger primary mirror that allows it to collect from an area 6.25 times larger than Hubble’s. Webb also boasts of a sunshield the size of a tennis court, which allows the telescope to block not only heat from the Sun, but also the Earth and the Moon, as it is positioned at a location far enough for its sunshield to block all these three bodies.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, himself a former legislator and astronaut, explained that light from the stars in the first released photo had been traveling for 13 billion years, adding further that the JWST can look back at 13.5 billion light years – a very close figure to the beginning of the universe, estimated at about 13.8 billion years ago.

“And when you look at something as big as this is, we are going to be able to answer questions that we don’t even know what the questions are yet,” Nelson remarked.

The James Webb Space Telescope is set for a mission span of 10 years but is expected to function significantly longer than its expected ten-year lifespan due to a sufficient amount of fuel to maintain its orbit.