NASA LAUNCHES JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

In about 72 hours if everything goes as planned NASA will launch The James Webb Space Telescope which is the largest, most powerful, most technologically advanced and also the most challenging space telescope ever built. James Webb took 25 years to build and cost over 10 billion dollars.

After launching from French Guiana, James Webb will travel to orbit. The James Webb Space Telescope will not be in orbit around the Earth, it will actually orbit the Sun, and it will be 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from the Earth at what is called the second Lagrange point or L2. What is special about this orbit is that it lets the telescope stay in line with the Earth as it moves around the Sun. This allows the satellite's large sunshield to protect the telescope from the light and heat of the Sun and Earth (and Moon). 

Once the observatory gets into orbit, it will undergo six months of commissioning in space—unfolding its mirrors, sunshield, and other smaller systems; cooling down; aligning; and calibrating. Astronomers worldwide will then be able to conduct scientific observations to broaden our understanding of the universe in ways that was never possible before.

Accessible to the worldwide scientific community, James revolutionary technology will study every phase of cosmic history—from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe. 

Webb’s infrared telescope will explore a wide range of science questions to help us understand the origins of the universe, it will offer scientists the opportunity to observe the evolution of galaxies in cosmic time, it will help scientists observe the formation of stars and planets, scientists will also be able to observe other planets that orbit other stars outside our solar systems, and our own solar system, in ways that was never possible before. 

James Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. 

James Webb will observe in the near and mid-infrared wavelengths, which are not visible to human eyes. Webb is designed to see infrared light with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. 

Webb will also observe exoplanets located in their stars’ habitable zones, i.e the regions where a planet could harbor liquid water on its surface, and will help to determine if signatures of life and by extension if life is present in other parts of the universe. Using a technique called transmission spectroscopy, the observatory will examine starlight filtered through planetary atmospheres to learn about their chemical compositions.

- NASA