Everything you need to know about the new James Webb Space Telescope

The most modern and powerful space telescope has just arrived at its destination and will begin a three-month alignment process.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest scientific space telescope, operated by NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies

To date, the James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful and most complex space science telescope ever built. It is a project of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. This one began its development in 1996 and it was not until January 2022 that it reached its orbit near the Lagrange point Earth-Sun L2, after its launch in December 2021.

The construction of the new James Webb Space Telescope was intended to replace the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes. Unlike Hubble, which is designed to observe the near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared spectra, the Webb telescope will observe in long-wavelength visible light, through the mid-infrared range.

With the James Webb Space Telescope, space agencies plan to study every phase of cosmic history, from the interior of the solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe. According to a NASA datasheet, the Webb Telescope will directly observe a never-before-seen part of space and time, when the first stars and galaxies formed.

This will be possible because the ultraviolet and visible light emitted by the first bright objects has been “stretched” or “red-shifted”. This is due to the continuous expansion of the universe and for this reason said light arrives today in the form of infrared light. The design of the James Webb Space Telescope makes it possible to observe this infrared light with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers plan to study planets and other celestial bodies in our solar system to determine their origin and evolution and compare them to exoplanets. They will also observe exoplanets located in the habitable zones of their stars, where liquid water could lodge on their surfaces, and determine if and where there are signs of habitability.

After its launch aboard the Ariane 5 rocket on December 25, 2021 from French Guiana, the Webb telescope reached its destination on January 24. In a NASA blog post, they announced that the telescope was performing course correction maneuvers. Over the past few weeks, the Webb Telescope has been working on unfolding the primary and secondary mirror segments. Engineers will now move on to the sophisticated three-month process to align the telescope’s optics with near-nanometer precision.

Being a project of great importance, NASA continuously releases all information related to the new James Webb Space Telescope to the public. Although it still has to go through a calibration process, the telescope will soon be ready to help further scientific research into the origin of the universe. It is very likely that in the near future new studies will shed light on this question with new data hitherto inaccessible with other tools.