The $ 10 billion James Webb Space Telescope of NASA will study the origin of the universe

For the past 31 years the Hubble Space Telescope has been the object of observations for astronomers but has begun to show its age too late. At the end of the 2009 service, the telescope had to slow down “safe mode“several times in the last few years – soon, this October. And although prospective comparisons show that Hubble could still operate at the end of the decade, NASA, and its ESA and CSA allies, have spent more than a dozen years creating a successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). With the launch of Webb – which is expected to take place on Christmas Day – it will take the place of the world’s brightest eyes in the sky for many years to come.

The 7.2-ton JWST will be the largest telescope NASA has ever put in place. Its first 6.5-meter-wide glass – made of 18 pieces covered in gold – is twice the size of Hubble and 60 times larger in the area. and the Spitzer Telescope, who retired in 2020. The solar shield he uses to protect his visual infrared sensors is as long as a tennis court, and all telescope equipment is three stories high. The 458 gigabits of data collected daily are routed through NASA’s Deep Space Network, and then sent to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which will integrate and disseminate the information to a wide range of celestial bodies.

Arriving at its home around the L2 Lagrange site 930,000 kilometers from Earth, the JWST will begin its four-point mission: seeking light from the original Big Bang stars; studying the design and development of galaxies, studying the evolution of stars and planets; and the search for sources of life.

To do this, Webb will take a different approach to Hubble before it happens. While Hubble viewed the universe in ultraviolet light, JWST will see in infrared, as Spitzer did but in a much clearer way. The use of this infrared is very important for Webb’s work as the wavelength can be viewed through a cloud of indoor air and dust to see hidden objects beyond.

Webb cameras are made up of four components: Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), and Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph / Fine Guidance Sensor. (NIRISS / FGS). These devices are very sensitive so that they can detect their working temperature. To reduce this infrared emission, three sensors are heated to 388 degrees Fahrenheit (-233 degrees C). The most affected MIRI is up to -448 ° F (-266 ° C) – only 7 degrees Kelvin above zero.

Finding MIRI in the cold is not easy. When the JWST starts to get in the way, the telescope can spend several weeks cooling the sensor to optimize the temperature using a helium-based refrigerator.

“It’s easy to cool something down to global warming, especially for science or industry,” said JPL cryocooler expert Konstantin Penanen. a recent post on the NASA blog. “But the Earth’s systems are very complex and powerless. In space observations, we need a cooling system that is physically, very energy efficient, and must be very reliable because we cannot go to repair it. That is why it is so difficult to deal with, that the MIRI cryocooler is at risk. ”

The resistance required by MIRI would be appropriate if infrared telescopes – especially those operating within the central spectrum as MIRI does, are severely limited by the heat of the same equipment and the surrounding atmosphere.

“With these three other devices, Webb measures a length of 5 microns. Increasing the length of 28.5 microns and MIRI adds a lot of science,” said George Rieke, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, he said earlier this month in a NASA blog. “This includes everything from counting protostars and rotating disks to rotation, a large amount of exoplanets, massive losses from altered stars, spherical orbital black holes in dynamic star clusters, and much more.”

Considering the slow-moving JWST temperature, blocking the telescope sensor from exposing sunlight (as well as locking it to other locations such as the Moon and Earth) is essential. To ensure that the cameras have permanent shade, NASA experts have developed five-part sunscreen made from Kapton film coated with aluminum to keep them in a cool, cool dark place.

“Its design and design improve the temperature at the edges, around, between layers,” said James Cooper, Sunshield Superintendent of JWST at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “The heat generated by the Spacecraft bus on the ‘core,’ or core, emits between layers of membrane to prevent overheating.

The kite-shaped sun protection is 69.5 meters long and 46.5 meters high .001 inches. The kite-like solar panels are grouped into five layers to release energy from the surface, which makes each successive cooler slightly cooler than the surface. Instead, the difference in external temperature (383K, or 230 degrees F) and internal components (36K, approximately -394 degrees F) is a great correlation.

To get enough light to see the farthest stars – some up to 13 billion light years – JWST will rely on its magnitude 6.5m. Unlike Hubble, which used a single 2.4m-wide glass, Webb glass is divided into 18 sections, each weighing only 46 pounds due to its beryllium structure. They are coated with gold to reflect their infrared light as well as the hexagonal shape so that, when properly connected in a way, they blend in well so that they can look like a single, horizontal, shiny plane. Their small size also allows them to be split and bent down so they can fit inside the Ariane 5 rocket that they can climb along the way.

The function of connecting the components to a single point in a distant galaxy falls into the category of actuator lenses. Seven small motors sit on the back of each glass section (one on each corner and seven in the middle), which allows them to better steer and bend. “Combining the original glass sections as one large mirror means that each mirror connects to the 1 / 10,000th thickness of a human hair,” he said Webb Optical Telescope Element Manager, Lee Feinberg.

After 20 years of combined development and delays, costing $ 10 billion and combining the efforts of more than 10,000 people, Webb Telescope is ready to be established – and hopefully this time it will. The program has experienced delays, delays, delays during its opening. NASA dropped the first day of March 2021 after the initial outbreak of COVID-19 and its associated closure – however, to be fair, GAO in January 2020 had just giving the JWST a 12 percent chance kicks off at the end of this year – and is setting up a well-known “sometime in 2021” period to be implemented.

NASA then he repeated the comparison to the company “sometime in October 2021,” finally settled on the opening window of Halloween, delay until the end of November / early December. Yes, early December quickly became late December, mostly and 22, which was also renamed back to its current day of December 24. Basically, making that 25.

This delay has been caused by a number of factors that make this tool of growth and conviction ready for implementation. After the construction was completed, the JWST had to test the battery, then load it into a container and go to the opening in Kourou, French Guiana. There, the real work of Preparing, greasing, and upgrading the JWST on the Ariane 5 rocket it took another 55 days.

The incident was further exacerbated by the “incident” on November 9 when, “a sudden, unpredictable release of the barrier band – which protects Webb from unlocking car adapters – caused quite a stir,” according to NASA. The The Webb review team introduced additional tests ensuring that the vibration did not damage other components or knock down anything needed to disassemble.

Now that telescope is called A-OK, final preparations are underway. Apart from other obstacles, the JWST will be launched at 7:20 ET on Christmas Day (look here life!) to begin his 30-day, 1.5-million-mile journey from Lagrange 2 where he will spend two weeks slowly opening glass and solar panels, and then exploring the depths of the original universe.