How we are able to see more outer space?

The James Webb telescope will launch in 2014 and will add to the observations that have made the Hubble Telescope our greatest one of all time.

The Hubble telescope was launched in 1990, and it had imperfections in its glass. In 1993, NASA sent up a group of astronauts who repaired the problems and created a fantastic telescope. As a result, Hubble found some 200 billion galaxies in the universe, and between 100 million and 200 billion stars in the various galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy has about 200 billion stars.

This was not expected when Hubble was launched but the information it has supplied is simply fantastic.

The Hubble telescope also was able to view matter that was only 800 million miles from the Big Bang, about 13 billion miles from our earth. This all increased the knowledge about the creation of our universe. The Hubble telescope is scheduled to be removed from space within the next three to five years. It will have been supplying information to astronomers for more than 20 years.

A successor to the Hubble telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is in process of construction and will be ready for launch in 2014. Its main goal is to observe the most distant objects in our universe, those far beyond what Hubble and other telescopes have been able to see.

The telescope is being built by the space agencies of 15 countries, including NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canada Space Agency (CSA). While NASA is the spectacular organization that started the work on the James Webb telescope, the other countries are contributing very important activities to the project.

The James Webb telescope is a giant infrared-optimized space telescope. It will find the first galaxies that formed in the universe, ones that have not been seen before by any telescope. Using infrared energy, it will peer through dusty clouds, something that ordinary telescopes cannot do.

The telescope will have a large mirror, more than 21 feet in diameter, much larger than the Hubble telescope, and also a giant shield to keep the sun from heating up the telescope. It must remain cool in order to work properly, with a temperature of around minus-360 degrees. It will rotate the sun at close to 1 million miles up.

The mirror will be launched folded into a much smaller space, containing 18 hexagonal segments folded on one another. After the telescope reaches its goal, the mirror will be opened up by activities on earth to form the 21-foot mirror. This process is spectacular and the engineers and astronomers who created it are brilliant.

Let’s look at James Webb’s primary scientific mission and its four basic components. First is to search for light from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe after the Big Bang. Second is to study the formation and the evolution of galaxies. Third is to understand the formation of stars and planetary systems. Fourth is to study planetary systems and the origin of life. It has been decided that all of these jobs and discoveries are done more effectively in the near-infrared than in the visible light.

The James Webb telescope is planned to be launched around June 2014, not from the United States but by Arian 5 from Guiana Space Center Kourou in French Guiana. It will end up in what is called an L2 orbit and it will have a launch mass of approximately 6.2 tons. It will take about three months to reach its destination. When it does, the astronauts on earth will start opening up its mirror and setting up the cameras and other equipment to begin its viewing of distant space in infrared.

This telescope is planned to operate for a minimum of five years and may go on to as many as 10 years. While it will be one of the most exciting devices in space at that time, NASA and its colleagues are continuing to develop bigger and better telescopes and cameras to find more and more of what the universe is composed of, as well as how it all started. Watch it. Enjoy!

Sidney X. Shore is a scientist, inventor and educator who lives in Salisbury and holds more than 30 U.S. patents.

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