JAKARTA – Right on Christmas Eve, December 24, NASA will launch its newest space telescope, the James Webb as the successor to the Hubble telescope.
Confirmed by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, the James Webb Space Telescope, known as JWST, will be launched on a European Ariane rocket from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) spaceport in French Guiana, at 7:20 a.m. EST.
“What I want for Christmas is not my two front teeth. But for the success of JWST,” said Nelson.
Granted, this launch has been delayed in recent weeks due to physical issues linking it to the rocket, but that hasn’t been a big deal over the last two decades.
Reporting from Fox News, Saturday, December 18, please note, JWST is a joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency that cost more than 10 billion US dollars. The telescope will provide tantalizing new information about the universe, including its beginnings.
Even so, Nelson hopes that at this launch there will be no crowds at the launch site because it coincides with the Christmas and New Year’s holidays (NATARU).
“Since Christmas Eve, all the congressional delegates that came down, all that has evaporated,” he told The Associated Press. Even NASA teams and contractors have been reduced, he said. But he will be there.
Years of late flying, JWST will look back and examine how this Solar System got its start, when the first stars and galaxies formed, while also examining the atmospheres of planets orbiting stars closer to home.
“There are so many things driving this. (JWST) can open all kinds of new understandings and revelations about the universe,” said Nelson.
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