James Webb, the largest telescope ever sent into space has been launched

‘Time Machine’, ‘A remarkable engineering feat’ or ‘Kick off the decade’ are some of the comments I’ve heard about the James WebbAnd the largest telescope ever sent into space; In Kourou, French Guiana. It was released at 12:20 GMT this Saturday, Christmas Day.

After a few delays, It was launched on an Ariane 5 missile this morning. James Webb, a collaboration between the US space agencies (NASA), Europe (European Space Agency), and Canada (CSA),It will travel up to 1.5 million km from Earth, about four times farther than the moon.

from there, It will provide an unprecedented view of the universe in the near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths, and will allow scientists to study a large variety of celestial bodies, to be able to Look back in time over 13.5 billion years to see the first galaxies born after the Big Bang.

But for this, in addition to detaching from the rocket in 27 minutes and 11 seconds, he must follow and overcome a long flight A series of critical phases in the next month. James Webb is so big It was folded in an origami style to fit the missile Arianespace And once the space will unfold Like a game of transformers. Among other things, The parachute should open, the size of a tennis court, and then Main mirror 6.5m, with which you can detect the faint light of distant stars and galaxies Sensitivity 100 times greater than that of the Hubble telescope, NASA reported.

All this in the first 29 days, but engineers will spend at least six months calibrating the instruments to get the telescope ready to do science.

James Webb, from It will experience very low temperatures (about -230°C)It will work for a minimum of five years, although it is planned so that it can do so for ten years. It is designed to expand upon Hubble’s scientific successes. More than 30 years have passed between the two telescopes and they are technologically very diverse: The size of the primary mirror (6.5 meters compared to Hubble’s 2.4 meters) and its ability to see infrared light (invisible to the human eye) are the main differences.

Thanks to this, James Webb will be able to look back in time and observe the first stars that were in the early universe and how the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang and their evolution, as well as the planets of our solar system and those orbiting other stars (the chemical composition of exoplanets).

For this purpose, it has included four state-of-the-art scientific instruments that provide the data needed to analyze the materials that make up stars, nebulae, galaxies and the atmospheres of planets, as the European Space Agency explains.

The instruments, a group of cameras, spectrographs and coronagraphs, are: MIRI, NIRSpec, NIRCam and NIRISS. The telescope will equip astronomers and astrophysicists around the world, in hitherto impossible ways, of the necessary capabilities Expand the frontiers of knowledge about our solar system, the formation of stars and planets, and how galaxies form and evolve. The universe has never been looked at with these eyes before, so this look can be both a milestone and a surprise. What did you say Stefan Israel, CEO of Arianespace Rocket operator, this is a contract launch.

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