The James Webb telescope is all set to change the way we know our universe. It is designed to look further than ever before into the cosmos. Read on to know more.
James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s ambitious and long-awaited space mission
Finally, on Christmas Day of 2021, NASA’s ambitious James Webb Space Telescope was finally launched from French Guiana. This mission is on its way to a point that is about a million miles away from the Earth. With this, we will all usher into a new era of space study and explore its secrets. Interestingly, scientists started planning this better and more advanced telescope even before launching the Hubble Space Telescope in the year 1990. Hubble Telescope has spent over three decades in space and now we are not quite sure for how long it would continue sending us some more ground-breaking information and photographs of the universe.
How is James Webb Space Telescope different from the Hubble Space Telescope?
The James Webb Space Telescope was supposed to launch in the year 2010 and its costs were estimated around one billion dollars. But due to many additions and revisions, the project kept getting delayed and its cost skyrocketed to ten billion dollars. But scientists argue that the wait was well worth it as the telescope would give us never seen before glimpses of the cosmos. Now, this telescope would take over the Hubble in more than one way. It would not give us glimpses of what lies ahead in the future but also how things were in the past. It will work towards finding the first galaxies and the stars. Scientists would also be able to search for many exoplanets and signs of life on them.
Here are some fascinating facts about James Webb Space Telescope that would set it apart from its predecessor.
The telescope’s mirror is a hundred times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. And thanks to this golden mirror, we hope to catch a glimpse of our cosmos like never before.
Hubble telescope collected images in visible light (which is ultraviolet light) whereas the James Webb Telescope would take images in infrared which would reveal the pictures in the minutest details. It also would enable the telescope to capture the older galaxies that are pushed farther away and we would know more about the universe when it was in its infancy.
This mission is slated to last for five years and hopefully, we see many secrets unravelled of our cosmos.
