The James Webb Space Telescope is on board a rocket at a cosmodrome in French Guiana. The planned launch date of the Hubble successor is December 25. “We expect to see things that no one has even thought of before,” says Scott Friedman, chief scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “We’ll be flooded and overwhelmed with data and images,” adds Dr. Michael Rutkowski, an astrophysicist at Minnesota State University.
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December 25 is the planned launch date of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a successor to the Hubble telescope under development for over a quarter of a century, which is to open up to scientists hitherto unknown recesses of the universe. The $ 10 billion project has encountered great obstacles and many years of delays in its path, but it is something that has been waiting for a generation of scientists.
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– Work on it lasted my whole life. The entire astronomical community expects this with tension. Everyone is nervous, they speculate whether – as in the children’s stories – the Grinch will steal the telescope with the holidays? Is this telescope cursed? Everyone I speak to is very excited about this, says Dr. Michael Rutkowski, an astrophysicist at Minnesota State University. The scientist and his team will be among the first to benefit from observing the telescope.
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The James Webb Space Telescope will take off from the spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana aboard the Ariane 5 rocket. It arrived in French Guiana on the MN Colibri on October 12.
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“We expect to see things that no one has even thought about before”
Where does the excitement of scientists come from? As Scott Friedman, the chief scientist of the Space Telescope Science Institute responsible for the launch of the telescope, explains, it will allow for a much further and more detailed study of the universe than the Hubble telescope, which has been operating for over 30 years. This is due, among other things, to the 6.5-meter main mirror composed of gold-plated beryllium hexagonal panels and the ability to observe in infrared.
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“ Hubble showed us new things about our universe, allowed us to measure them much more accurately, but also discovered things that no one expected, such as measurements of the atmosphere of other planets orbiting distant stars, properties of dark energy that we had no idea about. When it comes to JWST, we fully expect to see things that no one has even thought of before, says Friedman.
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He adds that thanks to infrared observations, the Webb telescope will be able to look much further into the origins of the universe and some of the first stars and galaxies, at a time when they were still forming, around 200 million years after the Big Bang. This will allow us to better understand the evolution of the universe, as well as, inter alia, the process of star formation.
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James Webb’s TelescopePAP / Reuters / Adam Ziemienowicz
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He will check where the living conditions are
But that’s just one of the things that excites scientists. Another is the possibility of a more detailed study of the atmospheres of exoplanets, i.e. planets outside the solar system – primarily in terms of the potential for life there.
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– We will never see aliens directly, but we will be able to say with certainty, for example, that a given planet has extremely favorable conditions for life. The Webb telescope offers great opportunities for such discoveries here – says Rutkowski. – For example, when dealing with a rocky planet that has oxygen and ozone in its atmosphere, we will be able to see if the levels of these gases are changing. Ozone breaks down quickly near hot stars, so if levels are renewing, where is it coming from? Potentially from life in the oceans, from plankton or other creatures. This is an example of what we can do – he describes.
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The telescope will also allow, among others to better understand some of the most puzzling concepts in science, incl. the nature of so-called dark matter – the hypothetical, “invisible” matter that makes up most of the mass in the universe, and the dark energy that scientists believe is responsible for the accelerating rate of expansion of the universe. As Rutkowski notes, it will also be possible, inter alia, deducing the “geometric shape of the universe”.
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“How to drink from a hydrant”
According to Friedman, the demand among scientists to use the telescope to conduct their own observations is huge, and four times the time available for research. This is five years – this is how the telescope is guaranteed to work, incl. due to the limited fuel supply. It is possible that it will be able to function longer; The Hubble telescope was originally intended to serve only 15 years, and has been in operation for twice as long. But unlike in near-orbit Hubble, Webb will be in the so-called L2 libration point, more than 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, which excludes current repairs.
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– Work on the schedule of this research is currently underway. We don’t want to waste a second – emphasizes Friedman.
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The mirror of James Webb’s telescopePAP / Reuters / Adam Ziemienowicz
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Both Friedman and Rutkowski will be among the first to benefit from the observations made by the new telescope – this is due to the fact that about half of the time in the first year of research is reserved for the teams of scientists who contributed to the telescope and its instruments. Friedman intends to spend his time exploring one of the galaxies – called ESO-137 – being “pulled” by a cluster of other galaxies, which in the process “sucked” gas out of it. Rutkowski’s team wants to look at the characteristics of stardust in early galaxies and its influence on the phenomenon of atomic ionization throughout the universe.
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– Using the data from this telescope will be like drinking from a hydrant. We will be overwhelmed and overwhelmed with data and images. I already know that I will probably use the information obtained by Webb for the rest of my career – says Rutkowski.
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However, there is a big question mark over all these plans: will the telescope be properly placed in place, or will it be possible to unfold the mirror and all its mechanisms. According to NASA, the mission is the most technically complex operation in history, with over 300 components, the failure of which could undermine the success of the entire mission.
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According to Friedman, the success of the mission will be determined primarily by the first two weeks, during which the telescope – folded during launch to fit into the Ariane 5 rocket – will disassemble all its components. But even with full success, it will take as long as six months for the telescope to be fully operational.
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“ I’ve been working on this telescope for 17 years and put in literally years of work to get this whole commissioning plan ready down to the last detail. We know that not everything will go as it is supposed to go, we do not know what problems we will find. But we have a good plan, each component has gone through years of testing, so we believe it will work, says Friedman.
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The James Webb Space Telescope aboard the Ariane 5 rocket at the cosmodrome in French GuianaPAP/EPA/NASA/Bill Ingalls
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photo-source">Main photo source: PAP/EPA/NASA/Bill Ingalls
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