That's because Webb will be too far away for rescuing, as was necessary when Hubble turned out to have blurry vision from a defective mirror. Retired astronaut-astronomer Steven Hawley is more stressed over Webb than he was for Hubble, which he released into orbit from space shuttle Discovery in 1990. “Like nothing we've done before,” said NASA programme director Greg Robinson. In all, hundreds of release mechanisms need to work - perfectly - in order for the telescope to succeed. Next, the mirror segments should open up like the leaves of a drop-leaf table, 12 days or so into the flight. If all goes well, the sunshield will be opened three days after liftoff, taking at least five days to unfold and lock into place. At 70 feet by 46 feet (21 metres by 14 metres), it's the size of a tennis court. Protecting the observatory is a wispy, five-layered sunshield, vital for keeping the light-gathering mirror and heat-sensing infrared detectors at subzero temperatures. The telescope's showpiece: a gold-plated mirror more than 21 feet (6.5 metres) across. “After Webb, we will never see the skies in quite the same way.” “We launch for humanity this morning,” Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel said minutes before liftoff. Inside Launch Control, there was a smattering of Santa hats. Last-minute technical snags bumped the launch nearly a week, then gusty wind pushed it to Christmas. Nelson bowed out along with a congressional delegation and many contractors who worked on the telescope.Īround the world, astronomers had eagerly waited to see Webb finally taking flight after years of setbacks. With the launch falling on Christmas and a global surge in COVID-19 cases, there were fewer spectators at the French Guiana launch site than expected. NASA partnered with the European and Canadian space agencies to build and launch the new 7-ton telescope, with thousands of people from 29 countries working on it since the 1990s. Intended as a successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope, the long-delayed James Webb is named after NASA's administrator during the 1960s. “It's going to give us a better understanding of our universe and our place in it: who we are, what we are, the search that's eternal,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said earlier this week.īut he cautioned: “When you want a big reward, you have to usually take a big risk.” Otherwise, the observatory won't be able to peer back in time 13.7 billion years as anticipated, within a mere 100 million years of the universe-forming Big Bang. It will take a month to get there and another five months before its infrared eyes are ready to start scanning the cosmos.įirst, the telescope's enormous mirror and sunshield need to unfurl they were folded origami-style to fit into the rocket's nose cone. The $10 billion observatory hurtled toward its destination 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometres) away, or more than four times beyond the moon. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope soared from French Guiana on South America's northeastern coast, riding a European Ariane rocket into the Christmas morning sky. The world's largest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away Saturday on a high-stakes quest to behold light from the first stars and galaxies and scour the universe for hints of life.
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