After 25 years, finally the James Webb telescope, which will tell us how it all started, will be launched into space

He James Webb telescope (JWST) takes 25 years of development. Conceived to be launched in the past decade, multiple delays in its development have forced successive postponements of its launch.

But this week NASA engineers, where it is being manufactured, completed one of the most complex phases in its construction: the ground command tests, which are the ones that will allow handling it from Earth. During the tests, the scientists were able to successfully drive the spacecraft’s instruments.

Thanks to the success of this test, considered one of the most critical in its construction, scientists were now able to finally confirm its launch for October 2021 from the Kourou spaceport, French Guiana.

17 countries participate in its development, it was built by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency, and will fulfill a series of specific and highly advanced missions.

Initially it was scheduled to be launched in March next year, but the health situation affecting the planet, postponed the plans. “According to current projections, the program expects to complete the remaining work within the new schedule without requiring additional funds, “said Gregory Robinson, director of NASA’s Webb program.

In development since 1996, the 6,200 kilogram behemoth, will have a useful life of 5 to 10 years, and It has unique characteristics, such as unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, and will also allow a wide range of investigations in the fields of astronomy and cosmology. An investment of more than 10 billion dollars in its construction.

Klaus von Storch, Aerospace Engineer and Chilean astronaut candidate, points out that this project is of tremendous importance and significance, “I think that NASA’s selection of each of its projects has so many options, there are so many people from so many universities, so many scientists who want to put an experiment in space, that at the time of having the pass and that resources are invested, and it is put in space, it is because it is already an experiment of a tremendous level ”.

The experts in charge of the mission have stated that it will have the ability to detect any galaxy in the universe. Unlike previous missions, the James Webb will have a special feature.

It is MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument), a tool designed to measure the mid-infrared wavelength range. This will allow us to look back, up to a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. (event estimated to have occurred about 13.5 billion years ago).

Von Storch explains that the value of the mission is explained “Because what is happening in different places is what can happen here in our system as well. For example, the Sun has a useful life, which is about five billion years more, therefore, it is interesting to think what will happen to it in the time that it has left ”.

The telescope “can look back (or to the past), in the sense of what the telescope is observing, it is actually something that happened a long time ago. Since the image travels at the speed of light, you can observe something that happened hundreds of millions of years ago ”, explains the national aerospace engineer.

The objective is for the James Webb telescope to be the substitute for the Hubble and Spitzer, with newer and more far-reaching technologies for the investigation of the universe.

“This was the first time we did this with Webb’s actual flight hardware and the ground system. We have carried out part of this test while the observatory was being assembled. This is a great milestone for the project and it is very gratifying to see how it works, “he said. Amanda arvai, Deputy Chief of Mission.

The ability to look into the past is based on the distance of objects, the further one is, the further back one can observe in time. For example, it takes eight minutes for light from the Sun to reach Earth, which means that the image that can be viewed occurred eight minutes ago.

Therefore, when you look at the image of a star that is millions of light years away, it means that we are seeing what that star looked like millions of years ago.

“When a telescope goes outside, out of the atmosphere, you do not have to make all the corrections that should be made in the telescopes on our planet, like Paranal, to observe the universe, a product that the atmosphere has components, which decreases the capacity for observation ”, explains Von Storch.

The Chilean astronaut candidate considers that “these technological leaps are benefiting what is the ability to obtain better images. In this sense, technological capacity is doubling, precision is increasing and it can be seen much better from space “.

The telescope is named after James E. Webb, a US government official who was NASA administrator between 1961 and 1968, and played a pivotal role in the Apollo program.