Status: December 25, 2021 5:17 p.m.
More than ten thousand people in the USA, Canada and Germany spent ten years building the new James Webb space telescope. Now they are hoping for dates from the birth of the universe.
The countdown is in French – the largest, most powerful and most expensive space telescope of all time takes off from the European spaceport in Kourou, in French Guyana. From a tropical rainforest, the James Webb Telescope begins a journey to the beginning of time itself, to the birth of the universe.
It is a picture book start through a thick cloud cover. Everything is going according to plan on a perfect track. James Webb is a joint development by NASA, European ESA and the Canadian space agency. The development took 30 years. The start was ten years late. The cost is ten billion dollars.
“More than ten thousand people have worked on it. Their hopes and dreams now rest on this telescope,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s director of science. She shoulders the lion’s share of the project, which was built in the USA. The control center and the coordination of the many thousands of experiments over the next ten to 15 years are located near Washington.
“Team Europe delivered”
But the European contribution of many scientists up to the start with European responsibility make ESA Director Joseph Aschbacher proud: “The whole world watched and I am happy to say: Team Europe delivered.”
Project leader Greg Robinson from NASA underlines this collaboration: “The world gave us this telescope and we are giving it back to the world today.”
With its 25 square meter high-precision mirror, the telescope will record images from the beginnings of the universe, which scientists hope to see the first galaxies after the Big Bang in order to gain completely new insights into the history and properties of the universe.
Future generations benefit
“Tens of thousands of scientists, some of whom are not even born, will benefit from this data,” explains Zurbuchen. There is still a long way to go before James Webb: First of all, 1.5 million kilometers to an orbit around the sun, to a very special point where it seems to stand still above the earth, always protected from heat and radiation .
The solar panels for the power supply are already working, but the mirror, a huge heat shield and many other parts have yet to unfold within the next 30 days. “On the one hand I am relieved and then I still feel pressure because the task ahead is by no means easier than it was yesterday,” said Zurbuchen.
It will take a little more than half a year for all instruments to be calibrated and for the telescope to deliver the first images. Its predecessor, the Hubble telescope, had to be repaired with the help of a space shuttle immediately after it was launched because the images were out of focus. That wouldn’t be possible with James Webb because it’s far farther away, five times farther than any human has ever flown. So there is only one try.