Telescope lifts off on a historic mission

Webb will see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe. Its mission is to #UnfoldTheUniverse, which will change our understanding of space as we know it. It has been built by an international collaboration between NASA and its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency. Thousands of engineers and hundreds of scientists worked to make Webb a reality, along with over 300 universities, organizations, and companies from 29 U.S. states and 14 countries. The @NASA Webb observatory was launched into space by Ariane-5 rocket from the European Space Agency's Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on Christmas day. At about 7:20 am ET (12:20 UTC), the beginning of a new, exciting decade of science climbed to the sky. The $10bn James Webb telescope that took 30 years to build has left Earth on its mission to show the first stars to light up the Universe. This observatory launched today is NASA’s largest and most powerful space science telescope ever constructed. Webb’s enormous size and frigid operating temperature (around -233°C) present extraordinary engineering challenges. After launching from French Guiana, the observatory will travel to an orbit about one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth and undergo six months of commissioning in space—unfolding its mirrors, sun shield, 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. Webb will also complement the science achieved by other NASA missions. The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) is the next great space science observatory following the Hubble Space Telescope, designed to answer outstanding questions about the Universe and to make breakthrough discoveries in all fields of astronomy. Webb, named after one of the architects of the Apollo Moon landings. Engineers working with the US, European, and Canadian space agencies have built this new observatory to be 100 times more powerful than Hubble. Webb builds on the successes of Hubble and complements the data collected by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory as well. It is equipped with a 6.5m-wide (21.3 ft) mirror, that is comprised of 18 gold-plated hexagonal deployable segments, the huge mirror is made from beryllium coated in gold. The telescope also carries four super-sensitive instruments and is protected by 5 layers of deployable sun shield, the size of a tennis court. Webb carries four scientific instruments namely: Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), and Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) with the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) for taking different measurements. Webb sees in infrared wavelengths, which allows astronomers to observe distant objects. As a result of the expansion of the Universe, very distant objects are highly redshifted (their light is shifted towards the redder end of the spectrum) and so infrared telescopes are needed to study them. While Hubble allows us to peer back to 'toddler' age galaxies, Webb will have the capability to study 'baby' galaxies, the first to form in our nearly 14 billion-year-old Universe. Webb will stare for days at a very narrow spot in the sky to detect light that has been traveling through the immensity of space for more than 13.5 billion years. Webb will see farther into our origins – from the Universe's first galaxies to the birth of stars and planets, to exoplanets with the potential for life. After the launch, in their congratulatory messages, the heads of different space agencies involved shared their happiness about the successful launch of the mission. “Launching Webb is a huge celebration of the international collaboration that made this next-generation mission possible. I want to thank everyone involved with the design, construction, and launch of this ambitious telescope, for making this day a reality. We are close to receiving Webb’s new view of the Universe and the exciting scientific discoveries that it will make,” says Josef Aschbacher, European Space Agency Director-General. “CSA is proud to have contributed critical instruments to this large‑scale international partnership as part of a global effort to spur the next great scientific leap. Canadian astronomers are excited to use Webb’s data and benefit from the tremendous science opportunities offered by this one-of-a-kind observatory,” says Canadian Space Agency President Lisa Campbell. “The James Webb Space Telescope represents the ambition that NASA and our partners maintain to propel us forward into the future,” says NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it’s what we don’t yet understand or can’t yet fathom about our Universe. I can’t wait to see what it uncovers!” Watch the attached video or explore the deployments tracker for more on how NASA #UnfoldTheUniverse. Video credit- NASA; images courtesy ESA; NASA.