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<ul class="summary-list"><li>JWST snaps thousands of photos of our universe, from sparkling <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-space-telescopes-stellar-nurseries-stunning-detail-2024-3">stellar nurseries</a> to clusters of distant galaxies.</li><li>But it takes human image processors, like Joe DePasquale, to turn these photos into works of art.</li></ul><p>Two years ago today, NASA unveiled the first full-color space images captured by the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-telescope-13-billion-old-galaxy-not-exist-2024-2">James Webb Space Telescope</a>.</p><p>We often hear about the scientists who study <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-webb-space-telescope-reveals-uranus-rings-new-image-2023-12">JWST's space images</a> and what they discover, but behind these beautiful works of art are image processors like Joe DePasquale who can spend days, or even weeks, transforming a single image.</p><p>Webb's raw telescope images can look like empty black boxes when they first beam back to Earth. It takes science, intuition, and sometimes a bit of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/learning/adobe-creative-cloud-photoshop-premiere-pro-price">Photoshop</a> to tease out the most important moments, DePasquale said.</p><div type="image" title="Cosmic cliffs" height="719" width="1244" msid="111697410" hostid="261" sizebytes="116640"></div><p>DePasquale is a principal science visuals developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. He processed some of the very first Webb images that the public got to see.</p><p>While working on an image, DePasquale gradually unveils details that sometimes amaze him. For the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/most-striking-photos-from-james-webb-space-telescopes-first-100-days">Deep Field image</a>, one of Webb's first images, he was astonished to see tiny dots around some galaxies at the center. These dots are globular clusters of stars that surround very distant galaxies.</p><p>"To be able to pull out that much detail in just this tiny part of the sky — seeing that in such clarity was amazing," DePasquale said.</p><h2 id="c94bc605-a7ae-4ece-b9a1-d14aedb28a3b">Unprecedented detail</h2><div type="image" title="James Webb Space Telescope" height="1363" width="2048" msid="111697412" hostid="261" sizebytes="181522"></div><p>After <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst-launch-date-october-2021-2020-7">Webb launched in 2021</a>, the next few months were "nail-biting," DePasquale said. Before the telescope could begin photographing the farthest reaches of the cosmos, it had to unfold and fully deploy in space.</p><p>"We watched every step along the way — the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-to-unfold-after-launch-2021-12">mirrors unfolding</a>, the sunshield deploying, all of these things happening. There were 300 different single points of failure where if anything didn't work, the whole observatory would just be scrapped," he said.</p><p>Webb deployed perfectly, and got to work <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-best-images-2023">photographing our vast universe</a>. A single Webb photo, like the Deep Field image, can capture thousands of galaxies.</p><div type="image" title="Webb's first Deep Field image" height="2000" width="1960" msid="111697409" hostid="261" sizebytes="163048"></div><p>Pulling all that detail out of the raw Webb image was no easy task. The final photo is actually four different images stitched together. When DePasquale first lined them up, he noticed that the brightness was different in each panel. To get them to match, he had to use Photoshop to adjust the lighting of the panels by hand.</p><p>It took about two weeks to process the Deep Field image from start to finish, he said. The end result is a sparkling portrait of the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasas-webb-telescope-snaps-first-full-color-image-2022-7">galaxy cluster SMACS 0723.</a></p><h2 id="34d5aa0e-b046-4cd3-bd93-00a9b728e227">Peering across the universe</h2><div type="image" title="Tarantula nebula" height="1157" width="2000" msid="111697408" hostid="261" sizebytes="237844"></div><p>Webb is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. It can see what the universe looked like around a quarter of a billion years after <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-space-telescope-spots-most-distant-supermassive-black-hole-2023-7">the Big Bang</a>, when the first stars and galaxies started to form.</p><p>In its last two years of observations, Webb has fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe with <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-3-galaxies-spotted-early-universe-2024-5">groundbreaking discoveries</a> like capturing the first images of stars forming inside the Pillars of Creation and the four most distant galaxies ever observed.</p><div type="image" title="pillars of creation towering clouds of dust two pictures side by side left is hubble's version faint dusty colors right is webb's version with way more stars and darker blue backdrop" height="1500" width="3105" msid="111697407" hostid="261" sizebytes="566852"></div><p>"Both Hubble and Webb are extremely high-angular-resolution telescopes. They're able to resolve very small details in these really distant objects," like the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/james-webb-space-telescope-captures-new-stars-in-tarantula-nebula-2022-9">Tarantula Nebula</a>, DePasquale told Business Insider.</p><p>The Tarantula Nebula is a star-forming cloud of gas and dust located in the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-milky-way-may-collide-with-another-galaxy-sooner-than-expected-2019-1">Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy</a>, 170,000 light-years away from Earth. That's really far away, but the extremely high precision of Webb's huge mirror allows the telescope to collect a lot of light from any object it observes, so it can photograph distant objects in striking detail, DePasquale said.</p><div type="image" title="A collage of images that shows the process of processing JWST's Tarantula Nebula image." height="1709" width="1472" msid="111697413" hostid="261" sizebytes="117772"></div><p>Processing raw space images is both a science and an art. </p><p>When processing the Tarantula Nebula image, DePasquale wanted to emphasize the cluster of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-new-telescope-image-shows-cone-nebula-in-stunning-detail-2022-11">hot, young stars</a> in the center. To do that, he enhanced the contrast between the light and dark parts of the image, and made the billowing clouds of the nebula glow in whites and made the young stars burn bright blue. He does a lot of this work by hand, manipulating the images using Photoshop.</p><p>"Our work transitions from being analytical and scientific into a more subjective realm, where it's more like a photographer. We make scientifically-informed aesthetic judgments about how to process the data to highlight <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jwst-captures-oldest-strand-cosmic-web-linking-galaxies-2023-7">key scientific features</a> within it," he said.</p>

A James Webb Telescope scientist explains what it's like to create the most beautiful space images of our time 

<ul><li>NASA has successfully finished tensioning the first three layers of the <keyword id="1102401" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="james-webb" source="Orion">James Webb</keyword>’s sunshield.</li><li>The final two layers are left after which the sunshield will be fully deployed.</li><li>The sunshield is highly important as it will protect the instruments inside from the sun’s radiation and other sources of light and heat.</li></ul>NASA finally launched the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasas-james-webb-telescope-has-several-crucial-deployments-before-its-mission/articleshow/88516011.cms">James Webb telescope</a> last Christmas after decades of research and development. The historic launch was successful after some delays but that was only the first hurdle given the complexity of the honeycomb-shaped <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/skywatching-space-events-in-january-2022-meteor-showers-stars/slidelist/88611445.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">space</a> telescope. Following that was a series of deployments of the telescope’s most important parts. <br /><br />The <keyword id="2501573" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="james-webb-telescope" source="Orion">James Webb telescope</keyword>’s movable parts were folded so that the telescope would be small enough to fit inside the 16-foot Ariane 5 rocket. The $10 billion telescope has a total of 50 major deployments and 178 release mechanisms before it can fully take shape. The telescope has now reached its most crucial part of unfolding its massive tennis court-sized sunshield which has five layers. <br /><br />NASA began tensioning the first layer of the sunshield on Monday, with the second and third layers following subsequently. These three layers are the closest to the sun, and the total tensioning process took the team five and a half hours to complete. Tensioning for the final two layers of the Webb’s sunshield will take place tomorrow. <br /><br />“The membrane tensioning phase of sunshield deployment is especially challenging because there are complex interactions between the structures, the tensioning mechanisms, the cables and the membranes,” said James Cooper, NASA’s Webb sunshield manager, based at Goddard Space Flight Center.<br /><br />After the tensioning of the final two layers, the sunshield will be fully deployed. This five-layer sunshield is important because it will protect the telescope from the sun’s radiation. Since the James Webb telescope has infrared light observations, the instruments inside the telescope have to be kept extremely cold. The sunshield will not only protect it from the sun’s radiation but also other sources of light and heat including heat emitted by the observatory itself. <br /><br />The final destination for the James Webb telescope is the second Lagrange point or L2 which is 1 million miles away from Earth. Unlike the Hubble telescope, the Webb will not orbit the Earth but it will instead orbit the sun. The telescope’s mission is to observe very faint infrared signals of very distant objects and help scientists learn more about the origin of our universe. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:</strong><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/whatsapp-vs-signal-vs-telegram-which-messaging-app-should-you-use-for-secure-conversations/articleshow/88666360.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">WhatsApp vs Signal vs Telegram: Which messaging app should you use to secure your conversations in 2022?</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/mobile/news/oneplus-10-pro-leaked-images-ahead-of-pre-orders-give-us-a-close-look-at-the-upcoming-flagship/articleshow/88664167.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">OnePlus 10 Pro leaked images ahead of pre-orders give us a close look at the upcoming flagship</a><br />

NASA's James Webb telescope to enter final and crucial stage of deploying its tennis court-sized sunshield

<ul><li>NASA’s ambitious <keyword id="2501573" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="james-webb-telescope" source="Orion">James Webb telescope</keyword> finally launched on December 25.</li><li>This telescope will help us learn more about how the universe came into existence.</li><li>But before its mission, there are some challenging deployments for the telescope in space.</li></ul>NASA successfully launched the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/how-to-watch-james-webb-telescope-launch-live-on-december-24/articleshow/88383075.cms">James Webb telescope</a> on Christmas, its largest and most powerful space science telescope. The $10 billion telescopes through its mission will help us learn more about how the universe came into existence.<br /><br />The James Webb telescope made its historic launch on December 25 after decades of development, and several delays. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasa-plans-to-return-to-the-moon-while-esa-has-missions-targeted-for-jupiter-in-2022/articleshow/88445816.cms">NASA</a>, including the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency are jointly taking part in this mission. The first major hurdle of this mission is over but there are several challenges that the team behind the Webb telescope has to overcome.<br /><br />What makes the James Webb unique and also one of the most complicated telescopes in terms of design is its movable parts that have been folded for a compact shape. This makes the telescope small enough to fit inside the 16-foot Ariane 5 rocket. For the honeycomb-shaped telescope to fully take shape, there will be 50 major deployments and 178 release mechanisms. <br /><br />The initial deployments which include the solar array and the gimbaled antenna assembly were successfully completed following the satellite’s launch. This antenna will be used to send around 28.6GB of data down from the observatory, twice a day, NASA had tweeted.<br /><br />The James Webb telescope will face one of its biggest deploying challenges on December 28 which would be the sunshield that has a five-layer structure, each the size of a tennis court. This sunshield will require many motors for its deployment and the process is said to take five days to complete.<br /><br />The next components to be deployed include the secondary mirror and the instrument radiator in early January. After this, the primary mirror of the telescope will be deployed with its two side wings unfolding and taking the final shape. <br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:</strong><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/3-former-spacex-engineers-have-launched-a-robot-restaurant-that-makes-a-pizza-every-45-seconds-take-a-look-inside-/slidelist/88491465.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">3 former SpaceX engineers have launched a robot restaurant that makes a pizza every 45 seconds. Take a look inside.</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasa-plans-to-return-to-the-moon-while-esa-has-missions-targeted-for-jupiter-in-2022/articleshow/88445816.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Space science missions to look forward to in 2022</a><br />

The next few weeks for NASA’s James Webb telescope are going to be the most crucial, here’s why

<ul><li><keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> has successfully completed deploying the major parts of the <keyword id="1102401" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="james-webb" source="Orion">James Webb</keyword> telescope.</li><li>It will now begin to journey towards its final destination which is 1.5 million kms away from Earth.</li><li>But there’s still a series of alignments to be done for the telescope to capture its first images.</li></ul>NASA launched the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasas-james-webb-telescope-final-unfolding-this-weekend/slidelist/88750016.cms">James Webb space telescope</a> on December 25, 2021 and what followed were a series of deployments for it to take shape. Last Saturday, the Webb completed its final deployment which was of the primary mirror. What remains now, well actually starts is the mission of the James Webb telescope.<br /><br />James Webb is the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/james-webb-telescopes-sunshield-to-enter-final-and-crucial-stage-of-deployment/articleshow/88680255.cms">largest space telescope </a>ever built and its mission is to help scientists find out more about the origin of the universe. The telescope will do so by capturing infrared light from celestial objects and with “much higher resolution than ever before”. In addition to studying about our solar system, the James Webb telescope is expected to learn more about distant worlds too. The James Webb telescope is a joint collaboration between <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/amazon-alexa-to-travel-to-the-moon-this-year-aboard-nasas-orion-spacecraft/articleshow/88725704.cms">NASA</a>, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="James Webb mission" comment="subhead" text="James Webb mission"><span data-til="noop"><keyword id="12771959" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="james-webb-mission" source="Orion">James Webb mission</keyword></span></cmsannotation><br />Webb's final destination is called the second Lagrange point or L2 which is located 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth. The telescope will perform a third mid-course correction burn which is one of three planned to place it precisely in orbit around L2. Here, the telescope will orbit the sun while staying in line with Earth. The telescope will also be protected by the sun’s radiation and other sources of heat and light by the sunshield that will keep the instruments cool enough to operate. <br /><br />Prior to arriving at the final spot, the James Webb telescope will first arrive at its insertion point which is expected to take place on January 23. From here, it will fire its engines to travel to the Lagrange Point. At the same time, the Webb team will also prepare to align the 18 hexagonal mirror segments of the telescope’s primary mirror. This alignment is expected to take months to complete, and after which the telescope will be ready to produce the first set of images. <br /><br />Webb's first set of images are expected to include objects such as stars and the Large Magellanic Cloud which is a satellite galaxy of the milky way. These images will also showcase the telescope’s four science instruments. The duration of the mission will be five years but NASA has kept a goal of 10 years. <br /><br />SEE ALSO:<br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/gadgets/news/from-colour-changing-cars-to-a-17-inch-foldable-laptop-here-are-all-the-interesting-announcements-from-ces-2022/articleshow/88797374.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">From colour changing cars to a 17-inch foldable laptop: Here are all the interesting announcements from CES 2022</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/amazon-alexa-to-travel-to-the-moon-this-year-aboard-nasas-orion-spacecraft/articleshow/88725704.cms" data-type="tilCustomLink">Alexa to the moon – Amazon’s digital assistant to travel to space aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft this year</a><br />

NASA completes James Webb final deployment — Here’s what’s next for the space telescope

<ul><li><keyword id="373653" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="webb" source="Orion">Webb</keyword>’s telescope instrument hits -266 degrees Celsius.</li><li>MIRI is jointly developed by <keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> and ESA.</li><li>The <keyword id="2501573" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="james-webb-telescope" source="Orion">James Webb Telescope</keyword> aims to see the birth of our universe.</li></ul>Nasa’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/nasas-powerful-james-webb-space-telescope-reached-its-destination-1-million-miles-from-earth/articleshow/89102194.cms">James Webb Telescope</a> has achieved its operating temperature of minus 266 degrees Celsius. This super-cold temperature will help in finding the clues of our existence right after the <keyword id="61221" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="big-bang" source="Orion">Big Bang</keyword>. <br /><br />Along with Webb's telescope, three other instruments were cooled off by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) in the shade of Webb’s tennis court-size sunshield by dropping the temperature to minus 183 Celsius. The cooling ability improves when the temperature gets lower and if cooling is not achieved quickly then certain heat loads will lead to making MIRI instruments super warm. Last week, the team has also achieved the milestone of dropping instrument temperature from minus 258 to minus 267-degree Celsius.<br /><br /><strong>Why do Webb’s instruments need to be this cold?</strong><br />Webb’s telescope has to observe the universe in infrared light. The stars and distant galaxies are hidden or surrounded by dust and they emit infrared light and so does Webb’s electronic system. According to Nasa, the cooling down of all four instruments and hardware will suppress infrared emissions from instruments. The cold temperature will suppress dark currents that are created by the vibration of atoms. These vibrations give the false impression that they have been hit by light from an external source. Reducing the temperature means less vibration, which in turn means less dark current. <br /><br />Still, there’s a lot of work for Webb’s telescope. Once it reached L2 it has to be aligned in 18 hexagonal mirror segments of the telescope’s primary mirror. Once the alignment is complete it can see the first images of galaxies by this summer.<br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:</strong><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/google-aims-to-become-100-carbon-free-energy-by-2030-heres-how-its-planning-to-do-it/articleshow/90839401.cms">Google aims to become 100% carbon-free energy by 2030 — here’s how it’s planning to do it</a><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/indias-second-largest-government-owned-hydrocarbon-producer-hit-by-a-major-cyberattack-hackers-demand-196-bitcoins-in-ransom/articleshow/90840425.cms">India’s second largest government-owned hydrocarbon producer hit by a major cyberattack, hackers demand 196 bitcoins in ransom</a><br />

James Webb telescope instrument goes super-cold to see the birth of the first galaxies

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> successfully deployed its James Webb Telescope in <keyword id="11895441" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="space" source="Orion">space</keyword>, the agency reported. </li><li>A team of scientists had slowly been unfolding the telescope since it launched on Christmas Day. </li></ul><p>NASA achieved a major breakthrough Saturday after its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-first-year-in-space-2021-12?r=US&amp;IR=T">James Webb Telescope</a> successfully unfolded in space, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-webb-telescope-reaches-major-milestone-as-mirror-unfolds">the agency announced</a>. </p><p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-to-unfold-after-launch-2021-12?r=US&amp;IR=T">risky manoeuvre</a>, which NASA has never pulled off before, marked the final stage of the telescope's 50 major deployments. NASA teams remotely opened the machine days after launch. </p><p>The 21-foot instrument was <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-launches-james-webb-space-telescope-2021-12?r=US&amp;IR=T">blasted</a> into the skies from French Guiana on Christmas Day. Astronomers expect Webb to fill a mysterious gap in the historical record of our universe — the first 400 million years after the Big Bang — and identify distant worlds that could host life. </p><p>NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a press release: "Today, NASA achieved another engineering milestone decades in the making. While the journey is not complete, I join the Webb team in breathing a little easier and imagining the future breakthroughs bound to inspire the world."</p><p>He added: "The <keyword id="12594489" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="james-webb-space-telescope" source="Orion">James Webb Space Telescope</keyword> is an unprecedented mission that is on the precipice of seeing the light from the first galaxies and discovering the mysteries of our universe." </p><p>The telescope, which is 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-hubble-space-telescope-photos-nebula-galaxies-universe-2021-6?r=US&amp;IR=T">Hubble Space Telescope</a>, cost $10 billion to create and was developed in conjunction with the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency. </p><p>The unfurling of Webb was a tricky proposition. Webb has two major components: a hexagonal mirror made of 18 gold-coated segments and a sunshield the size of a tennis court, which deflects sunlight to keep the telescope cool. Both were too large to fit in a rocket, so NASA folded them up like a drop-leaf table.</p><p>The successful completion means the telescope will spend about four months aligning and focusing its mirrors. Then the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-ask-nasa-for-huge-space-telescope-image-habitable-planets-2021-11?r=US&amp;IR=T">observatory</a> will calibrate its <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword> instruments: four cameras and spectrographs designed to observe the universe in different wavelengths of infrared light.</p>

NASA successfully completes unfolding of James Webb space telescope, which has been hailed as a groundbreaking achievement

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launches-nasa-ixpe-satellite-black-holes-dead-stars-2021-12">NASA</a> launched the <keyword id="12594489" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="james-webb-space-telescope" source="Orion">James Webb Space Telescope</keyword> on Saturday, after years of delays and budget hikes.</li><li>Webb is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope and expected to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-first-year-in-space-2021-12">revolutionize astronomy</a>.</li></ul><p><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> sent $10 billion worth of delicate hardware screaming into the skies above French Guiana on Saturday, when it launched the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/watch-live-nasa-launch-james-webb-space-telescope-2021-12">James Webb Space Telescope</a> at 7:20 a.m. ET.</p><p>JWST, or "Webb" for short, is the first big telescope to rocket past Earth's atmosphere since the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990.</p><p>Webb, a collaboration between NASA, the <keyword id="11921802" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="european-space-agency" source="Orion">European Space Agency</keyword>, and the Canadian Space Agency, is six times larger and 100 times more powerful than its predecessor. Astronomers expect it to fill a mysterious gap in the historical record of our universe — the first 400 million years after the Big Bang — and to identify distant worlds that could host alien life.</p><div type="image" title="james webb space telescope gold octagon mirror in large white cleanroom" height="1618" width="2157" msid="88493132" hostid="261"></div><p>"What I'm thinking about is looking at the universe in new light. We've never seen the universe as Webb will show it to us," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator, said in a livestream minutes before the launch.</p><p>An Ariane 5 rocket, with Webb tucked inside its fairing, roared to life and heaved itself off a launchpad at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana at 7:20 a.m. ET on Saturday. Roughly three minutes later, 75 miles above Earth, the rocket's nose shed its outer shell, exposing Webb. The body of the Ariane 5 rocket fell away, leaving its upper stage to fire its engines and give Webb one final boost away from Earth before it, too, separated and fell away.</p><div type="image" title="james webb space telescope in space above earth" height="1080" width="1920" msid="88493614" hostid="261"></div><p>A decade behind schedule and over budget, Webb has finally careened into the blackness of space. Over the next six months, it has to unfold itself, align its mirrors, calibrate its instruments, cool to a frigid minus 380 degrees Fahrenheit, and travel 1 million miles from Earth. Then it can begin to study the universe.</p><p>"I won't breathe a sigh of relief until we declare we're operational, 180 days after launch," Bill Ochs, NASA's project manager for Webb, said in a November press briefing.</p><h2>Webb will unfold itself in space — with 344 opportunities for failure</h2><p>It will take about a month for Webb to reach its destination: an orbit around the sun, trailing Earth by 1 million miles, which is about four times the distance between the moon and Earth. Along the way, the telescope must unfold itself — a risky proposition.</p><p>Webb has two major components: a hexagonal mirror made of 18 gold-coated segments and a sunshield the size of a tennis court, which deflects sunlight to keep the telescope cool. Both were too large to fit in a rocket, so NASA folded them up like a drop-leaf table.</p><div type="image" title="james webb space telecsope folded up hanging above hole with yellow railings" height="1872" width="2496" msid="88493134" hostid="261"></div><p>"Unfolding Webb is hands down the most complicated spacecraft activity we've ever done," Mike Menzel, NASA's lead mission systems engineer for Webb, said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUAvXYW5bmI">video</a> on the subject.</p><p>Webb's design includes 344 unique mechanisms with no backup. NASA calls these "single-point failures," since each must work perfectly for the telescope to function. About 80% of those points are part of the two-week unfolding process, Menzel said.</p><p>If it unfolds according to the plan, Webb will then spend about four months aligning and focusing its mirrors. Then the observatory will calibrate its <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword> instruments: four cameras and spectrographs designed to observe the universe in different wavelengths of <keyword id="12812690" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="infrared" source="Orion">infrared</keyword> light.</p><h2>Webb's first year in space could change our understanding of the universe</h2><div type="image" title="hubble ultra deep field image 10,000 galaxies pinpricks of light" height="1650" width="2200" msid="88493135" hostid="261"></div><p>For <keyword id="12206000" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="telescopes" source="Orion">telescopes</keyword>, peering into the distance is also looking back in time. That's because it takes time for light to travel. The farther away an object is, the older its light is by the time it reaches Earth.</p><p>Thanks to Hubble, astronomers have seen the light of ancient galaxies from 400 million years after the Big Bang. Some of those galaxies were much larger than scientists expected, meaning they grew rapidly in those first 400 million years.</p><p>"We have this 13.8-billion-year story — the universe — and we're missing sort of a few key paragraphs in the very first chapter of the story," Amber Straughn, a scientist on NASA's Webb team, said in a November press briefing. "JWST was designed to help us find those first galaxies."</p><p>During its first year, Webb is scheduled to hunt for those primordial galaxies, as well as conduct nearly 400 investigations from thousands of scientists all over the world.</p><div type="image" title="An artist’s impression shows the planet K2-18b, its host star and an accompanying planet in this system. K2-18b is now the only super-Earth exoplanet known to host both water and temperatures that could support life. UCL researchers used archive data from 2016 and 2017 captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and developed open-source algorithms to analyze the starlight filtered through K2-18b’s atmosphere. The results revealed the molecular signature of water vapor, also indicating the presence of hydrogen and helium in the planet’s atmosphere." height="1750" width="2333" msid="88493136" hostid="261"></div><p>Those projects include imaging every planet, moon, and asteroid in our solar system, starting with Mars and moving outwards; analyzing distant planets' atmospheres for gases that could signal alien life; and searching for signs of platinum and gold that's forged when massive dead stars collide. Webb's infrared cameras will also allow it to peer through clouds of dust that obscure the universe's stellar nurseries, the dense regions where gases collapse into stars.</p><h2>NASA has launched a controversial name into space</h2><div type="image" title="james webb space telescope artist illustration gold panels octagon on purple foil platform" height="1708" width="2277" msid="88493137" hostid="261"></div><p>Webb's name has stirred controversy. More than 1,000 people, including scientists who applied for observing time with Webb, signed a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PS_rtSOzaH40q1r_jQkhJhXmW97DOw-S6dqGA0jDKzM/edit">petition</a> to rename the telescope earlier this year.</p><p>The petition argues that the telescope's namesake — James Webb, NASA's second administrator — helped enforce government policies discriminating against LGBTQ employees in the 1950s and 60s. The letter cites archival documents indicating that prior to his tenure at NASA, when Webb was undersecretary of state, he met with President Harry Truman to discuss enforcing those policies.</p><p>According to other <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/417/1161/190082/">documents</a> from a 1969 court case, NASA fired at least one employee after an official interrogated him about his sexuality. The firing took place during Webb's tenure as NASA administrator. NASA conducted a review of the historical documents this summer and ultimately decided against changing the telescope's name.</p><p>"We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement at the time.</p><p><em>This post has been updated with new information.</em></p>

NASA launches its long-awaited $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, kicking off a cosmic revolution

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launches-nasa-ixpe-satellite-black-holes-dead-stars-2021-12">NASA</a> plans to launch its $10 billion <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-first-year-in-space-2021-12">James Webb Space Telescope</a> into space on Saturday.</li><li>Webb will revolutionize <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomers-ask-nasa-for-huge-space-telescope-image-habitable-planets-2021-11">astronomy</a>, but first it has to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-checking-james-webb-space-telescope-for-damage-after-incident-2021-11">survive</a> launch and rebuild itself in space.</li></ul><p><keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> is about to send its delicate, $10 billion new observatory — the <keyword id="12594489" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="james-webb-space-telescope" source="Orion">James Webb Space Telescope</keyword> — screaming into space.</p><p>JWST, or "Webb," is the first major space observatory since the famous Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990 and is still studying the cosmos today.</p><p>Webb is NASA's attempt to fill a mysterious gap in the historical record of our universe. For <keyword id="12206000" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="telescopes" source="Orion">telescopes</keyword>, peering into the distance is also looking back in time. That's because it takes time for light to travel. The farther away an object is, the older its light is by the time it reaches Earth. Astronomers have seen the light of ancient galaxies from 400 million years after the Big Bang. Some of those galaxies were much larger than scientists expected, which means that they grew rapidly in those first 400 million years.</p><p>"We have this 13.8-billion-year story — the universe — and we're missing sort of a few key paragraphs in the very first chapter of the story," Amber Straughn, a scientist on NASA's Webb team, said in a November press briefing. "JWST was designed to help us find those first galaxies."</p><div type="image" title="ariane 5 rocket lifting off spewing fire and smoke against dark blue sky" height="1772" width="2363" msid="88456786" hostid="261"></div><p>Webb relies on infrared, rather than visual light, to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-first-year-in-space-2021-12">study the cosmos</a>, and it has the largest mirror ever built for a space-based observatory. That makes Webb 100 times more powerful than Hubble. The new telescope should be able to see the very first galaxies forming 100 million years after the Big Bang.</p><p>It's also set to study the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets circling other stars, the origins of supermassive black holes, debris of neutron-star collisions, and a slew of other astronomical mysteries.</p><h2>Watch live as NASA launches its next great space telescope</h2><p>Astronomers have waited a long time to start using Webb. NASA first conceived of the telescope in the 1990s. It was supposed to cost $500 million and launch in 2011, but redesigns, technical issues, and schedule adjustments drove up the cost and delayed the launch by a decade. This year alone saw three delays, two caused by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-checking-james-webb-space-telescope-for-damage-after-incident-2021-11">technical issues</a> in the last month.</p><p>Now, finally, Webb is scheduled to roar into the skies above Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket at 7:20 a.m. ET on Saturday, December 25 — Christmas morning. NASA will broadcast the launch in the livestream below, starting at 6 a.m. ET.</p><p>"You're taking this extraordinarily delicate, precise, state-of-the-art scientific instrument, you're slapping it on a rocket, and for the next eight minutes the explosion from that rocket is following you into outer space," Mike Menzel, NASA's lead mission systems engineer for Webb, said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUAvXYW5bmI">NASA video</a> on the subject.</p><p>The Ariane 5 should push Webb into space within 27 minutes, but it will be another six months before the telescope can begin conducting <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword>. That's how long its "commissioning" will take — a process that involves unfolding, aligning mirrors, cooling, and calibrating instruments.</p><h2>Webb has to unfold and travel 1 million miles after launch</h2><p>It will take about a month just for Webb to reach its destination — an orbit around the sun, trailing Earth by 1 million miles, which is about four times the distance between the moon and Earth. Along the way, the telescope must unfold itself.</p><p>Webb is comprised of two major components: a hexagonal mirror made of 18 gold-coated segments and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both were too large to fit in any existing rocket, unless NASA folded them up like a drop-leaf table.</p><p>In some ways, unfolding the telescope is scarier than launching it.</p><p>"Unfolding Webb is hands down the most complicated spacecraft activity we've ever done," Menzel said.</p><div type="image" title="james webb space telecsope folded up hanging above hole with yellow railings" height="1872" width="2496" msid="88456789" hostid="261"></div><p>The sunshield blocks the heat of the sun, allowing Webb to cool to a frigid minus 380 degrees Fahrenheit — far colder than any place on Earth. Webb must reach this low temperature in order to detect the faint heat of distant stars and planets, in the form of infrared light. It will take Webb about two months to cool.</p><p>After unfolding, Webb will spend about four months aligning and focusing its mirrors. Then the observatory must calibrate its science instruments: four cameras and spectrographs designed to observe the universe in different wavelengths of infrared light.</p><h2>Webb is heading to space with a controversial name</h2><div type="image" title="james webb space telescope artist illustration gold panels octagon on purple foil platform" height="1708" width="2277" msid="88456791" hostid="261"></div><p>In addition to technical and schedule challenges, Webb's long journey to launch has stirred controversy. More than 1,000 people, including scientists who applied for observing time with Webb, signed a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PS_rtSOzaH40q1r_jQkhJhXmW97DOw-S6dqGA0jDKzM/edit">petition</a> to rename the telescope earlier this year.</p><p>The petition argues that the telescope's namesake — James Webb, NASA's second administrator, who oversaw the beginning of the Apollo moon missions — helped enforce government policies discriminating against LGBTQ employees in the 1950s and 60s.</p><p>Historian David Johnson's book on the policies, "The Lavender Scare" — a name which refers to the systemic purge of LGBTQ employees from government agencies — cites archival documents, which indicate that prior to his tenure at NASA, when Webb was undersecretary of state, he met with President Harry Truman to discuss enforcing those policies. According to other <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/417/1161/190082/">documents</a> from a 1969 court case, NASA fired at least one employee after an official interrogated him about his sexuality. The firing took place during Webb's tenure as NASA administrator.</p><p>NASA conducted a review of the historical documents this summer and ultimately decided against changing the telescope's name.</p><p>"We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement at the time.</p>

Watch NASA launch its $10 billion, game-changing James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas morning

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-world-records-chili-peppers-international-space-station-2021-12">NASA</a> is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-launches-nasa-ixpe-satellite-black-holes-dead-stars-2021-12">launching</a> its next <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-hubble-portraits-jupiter-saturn-uranus-neptune-changing-weather-colors-2021-11">major space observatory</a>. The real nail-biter is the weeks after liftoff.</li><li>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-first-year-in-space-2021-12">James Webb Space Telescope</a> must unfold in <keyword id="11895441" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="space" source="Orion">space</keyword> — a complex maneuver <keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> has never attempted.</li></ul><p>NASA has loaded its most valuable, delicate telescope onto a 15-story rocket in French Guiana. On Friday, the agency will fill the rocket with highly combustible liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel, fire the engines, and watch it scream through the atmosphere with a $10 billion observatory in tow.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-first-year-in-space-2021-12">James Webb Space Telescope</a> — JWST, or simply "Webb," for short — is the largest and most powerful space observatory ever built. If all goes according to plan, it will revolutionize <keyword id="11949140" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="astronomy" source="Orion">astronomy</keyword>.</p><p>But first the telescope has to safely get into position. Launch, which is scheduled for December 24, is only half the battle.</p><p>Webb's main feature is a 21-foot-wide mirror made up of 18 gold-coated beryllium panels, which sits atop a diamond-shaped sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both were too big to fit in any existing rocket without folding up like a drop-leaf table. Instead, they'll have to unfold, or "deploy," in space.</p><p>Unfolding a telescope as large and complex as Webb is a risky maneuver and one that NASA has never tried before. If any of the deployment mechanisms snag or malfunction, NASA can't send an astronaut to the <keyword id="12179462" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="spacecraft" source="Orion">spacecraft</keyword> to fix it or replace the broken part.</p><p>Failure could mean $10 billion wasted and the hopes of countless astronomers down the drain.</p><div type="image" title="james webb space telescope lifted vertically enormous gold mirrors wrapped in purple foil inside white cleanroom" height="2048" width="1536" msid="88415731" hostid="261"></div><p>"When I started in this business about 40 years ago, I remember one of the first lessons I got taught was avoid deployments on orbit," Mike Menzel, NASA's lead mission systems engineer for Webb, said in a November press briefing. "James Webb cannot avoid the deployments. In fact, James Webb has to perform some of the most complex sequence of deployments ever attempted."</p><p>Webb must also align its mirrors, calibrate its instruments, and fall into an orbit trailing Earth around the sun from about 1 million miles away — four times the distance between the moon and Earth. The whole process is expected to take about six months.</p><p>"We've built it, we've aligned it, we've tested it, we've proved it worked. Now we're going to have to break it up, fold it up, and actually rebuild it on orbit," Menzel said, adding, "That's never been done before."</p><div type="image" title="james webb space telecsope folded up hanging above hole with yellow railings" height="1872" width="2496" msid="88415734" hostid="261"></div><p>Webb is a decades-long project of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency. Redesigns, technical errors, and extreme weather events repeatedly delayed launch and drove up its price tag from the original $500 million. Now it faces one last barrier to the new era of space astronomy.</p><p>"Unfolding Webb is hands down the most complicated spacecraft activity we've ever done," Menzel said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUAvXYW5bmI">NASA video</a>.</p><h2>Webb will spend its first 2 weeks in space unfolding itself</h2><p>The deployments should happen within two weeks of launch. If anything goes wrong, NASA can't send humans or robots to fix it. Webb is on its own.</p><p>The sunshield will unfold first, since it's critical to Webb's functioning. Five layers of Kapton film have to block sunlight from hitting the rest of the telescope, allowing the mirrors and <keyword id="11896083" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="science" source="Orion">science</keyword> instruments to cool to a frigid minus 380 degrees Fahrenheit — far colder than any place on Earth.</p><p>It will take Webb about two months to reach that temperature, which is how cold the observatory must be to detect faint heat of distant stars and planets in the form of infrared light. For its mid-infrared instrument, which needs to reach an even lower temperature of minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, cooling will take about 100 days.</p><p>That can only happen if the sunshield unfolds properly. But its floppy material makes it deployment's biggest wild card.</p><p>"Take a string and put it on a tabletop and push on it, and see if you can predict the shape of that string. Chances are you will not be able to, and so it is with the membranes of the sunshield," Menzel said.</p><p>If that floppy material opens into the wrong shape, or snags on other parts of the observatory, it could be a disaster for Webb. So NASA and its contractor, Northrop Grumman, have built a complex unfolding system for the sunshield, employing 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assemblies, eight motors, 400 pulleys, and 1,312 feet of cable.</p><h2>Webb has 344 opportunities for failure. Most are part of unfolding.</h2><p>All of the sunshield's release mechanisms are what NASA calls "single-point failures." If they don't work, there is no backup for them. They either let the sunshield unfold or they don't. No sunshield could mean no functional telescope.</p><p>If a release mechanism fails, NASA has a few troubleshooting options: resend the command to release, spin the observatory or rock it back and forth to dislodge anything that's stuck, or turn the telescope toward the sun to heat up the troublesome mechanism. But it can't rely on backup hardware. Each mechanism must work in order to unfold the sunshield.</p><p>Overall, Webb has 344 single-point failure items. About 80% of those items are part of the deployment process, Menzel said. Many of them are necessary to prevent the sunshield from being dangerously floppy. But each single-point failure item adds its own risk to the deployment process.</p><p>To strike the right balance — controlling the sunshield without adding too many opportunities for failure — NASA conducted several studies and consulted independent review groups, according to Menzel.</p><p>"We've all agreed we found the sweet spot on this," he said.</p><p>NASA has also inspected and tested each single-point failure item to identify all the ways it could malfunction and reduce the likelihood of such a failure, he added.</p><p>Once the sunshield is open, Webb must unfold a tripod holding its secondary mirror, then open the two flaps of its main mirrors. If that's successful, it will still be five months before Webb can start conducting science. It needs three months to get its mirror into alignment and two to calibrate its science instruments.</p><p>Only then can Webb engineers in the US, Europe, and Canada breathe a sigh of relief.</p>

The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope has to unfold itself in space — a nail-biting maneuver NASA's never attempted

<br /><br /><ul><li>The two halves of the <keyword id="145694" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="James-Webb-Space-Telescope">James Webb Space Telescope</keyword> have finally been put together.</li><li><keyword id="43700" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hubble-Telescope">Hubble Telescope</keyword>'s $9.7 billion successor is finally being assembled after 12 years of delays and cost overruns.</li><li>The next step is for the engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to install James Webb's sunshield.</li></ul>The <keyword id="145693" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Hubble-Space-Telescope">Hubble Space Telescope</keyword>'s $9.7 billion successor, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/miscellaneous/nasas-future-missions-will-shoot-for-an-icy-moon-of-saturn-photograph-the-big-bang-and-more-heres-whats-coming-in-the-next-10-years-/slidelist/70756412.cms">James Webb Space Telescope</a>, has finally come together after a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/No-NASAs-8-7-billion-golden-telescope-is-not-complete-its-torturous-2-year-journey-to-space-has-only-just-begun/articleshow/55231863.cms">delays and cost overruns</a>.<br /><br />The two halves of the next-generation space telescope have come together for the first time ever — something that was scheduled to happen 12 years ago, in 2007.<br /><br />
  <div type="image" title="telescope2_edited" msid="70886254" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The James Webb Space Telescope&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>



<br />"This is an exciting time to now see all Webb's parts finally joined together into a single observatory for the very first time," said Gregory Robinson, the Webb program director at NASA in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-s-james-webb-space-telescope-has-been-assembled-for-the-first-time">statement.</a><br /><br />Even now, the telescope has only been connected ‘mechanically', according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Engineers with the space agency still have to connect the wires and links within the telescope electronically for it to be functional.<br /><br /><strong>Why do we need a new telescope?<br /></strong><br />James Webb Space Telescope is no mere replacement for the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/the-hubble-space-telescope-is-turning-25-feast-your-eyes-on-some-of-its-most-stunning-images/slidelist/47029922.cms">Hubble Space Telescope</a> but an upgrade. While Hubble captures optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, James Webb will capture the universe in infrared.<br /><br />James Webb will also be able to peer back further into the universe than Hubble. <br /><br />Hubble has a 2.4 meter-wide mirror is limited in the amount of light that it can capture. The James Webb Space Telescope, in contrast, has a 6.5 meter-wide mirror that can see seven times as far.<br /><br />
  <div type="image" title="26504730220_6093d4a042_z" msid="70886325" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;James Webb Space Telescope&amp;#39;s primary mirror at NASA Goddard&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>



<br />As the new telescope can capture more light, it will be better tuned to capture infrared light from the founding stars that came into being more than 13.5 billion years ago.<br /><br />"The more we learn more about our universe, the more we realize that Webb is critical to answering questions we didn't even know how to ask when the spacecraft was first designed," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-completes-webb-telescope-review">statement</a>.<br /><br /><strong>What next?<br /></strong><br />The next step for the engineers at NASA is to put together the the James Webb Space Telescope's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/the-coolest-nasa-missions-happening-right-now-and-the-most-exciting-ones-yet-to-launch/slidelist/53340200.cms">five-layer sunshield</a> in place. <br /><br />
  <div type="image" title="6189304429_f4a2362c77_b" msid="70886303" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The James Webb Space Telescope deploys a tennis-court sized Sunshield made of five thin layers of Kapton E with aluminum and doped-silicon coatings to reflect the sun&amp;#39;s heat back into space&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>



<br />The sunshield is an integral part of the telescope since it will protect the telescope's mirrors and scientific instruments from infrared light from the Sun.<br /><br />The telescope is the size of a tennis court and will only work if it can unfurl itself in space without tearing or falling apart.<br /><br /><strong>See also:</strong><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/miscellaneous/nasas-future-missions-will-shoot-for-an-icy-moon-of-saturn-photograph-the-big-bang-and-more-heres-whats-coming-in-the-next-10-years-/slidelist/70756412.cms">NASA's future missions will shoot for an icy moon of Saturn, photograph the Big Bang, and more. Here's what's coming in the next 10 years.</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/the-moon-is-shining-brighter-than-the-sun-and-that-is-dangerous/articleshow/70737236.cms">The Moon is shining brighter than the Sun — and that is dangerous</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/a-new-dark-planet-on-nasas-radar-might-hold-the-key-to-what-makes-or-breaks-a-planet/articleshow/70768925.cms">A new ‘dark' planet on NASA's radar might hold the key to what makes or breaks a planet</a><br />

The two halves of Hubble’s $10 billion successor have finally come together after 12 years of waiting

In another significant single-day spike amid the ongoing resurgence, India logged 37,479 new <keyword id="8785701" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="COVID-19-cases" source="Orion">Covid-19 cases</keyword> in a span of 24 hours, taking the overall active infection tally to 1,71,830, the <keyword id="156021" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Union-Ministry-of-Health-and-Family-Welfare" source="Orion">Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare</keyword> announced on Tuesday.<br /><br />The <keyword id="9281338" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="active-caseload" source="Orion">active caseload</keyword> now accounts for 0.49 per cent of the country's total positive cases, according to the Ministry.<br /><br />Also in the same period, the country registered 124 new Covid fatalities, which increased the nationwide death toll to 4,82,017.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the <keyword id="1609796" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="omicron" source="Orion">Omicron</keyword> infection tally has climbed at 1,892, of which 766 have been discharged from hospitals.<br /><br />So far, at least 23 states have reported Omicron cases, said the Ministry.<br /><br />The recovery of 11,007 patients in the last 24 hours has increased the cumulative tally to 3,43,06,414. Consequently, India's recovery rate stands at 98.13 per cent.<br /><br />A total of 11,54,302 tests were conducted across the country in the past 24 hours, taking the overall number to over 68.24 crore.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the weekly positivity rate has climbed to 2.05 per cent amid the sudden spike of cases, while the daily positivity rate stood at 3.24 per cent.<br /><br />With the administration of 99,27,797 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours, India's Covid inoculation coverage reached 146.70 crore as of Tuesday morning.<br /><br />More than 19.69 crore balance and unutilized Covid vaccine doses are still available with the states and UTs to be administered, according to the Ministry.<br /><br /><br /><strong>SEE ALSO:<br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/james-webb-telescopes-sunshield-to-enter-final-and-crucial-stage-of-deployment/articleshow/88680255.cms">NASA's James Webb telescope to enter final and crucial stage of deploying its tennis court-sized sunshield</a><br /></strong><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/marico-hdfc-dilip-buildcon-and-other-hot-stocks-to-watch-out-for-on-january-4/slidelist/88679287.cms"><strong>Marico, HDFC, Dilip Buildcon and other hot stocks to watch out for on January 4</strong></a><br />

India reports 37,379 new COVID-19 cases in last 24 hours

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>The long slog to finish the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA's tennis-court-sized successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, has been difficult and expensive.</p><p>It has taken nearly 20 years, billions of dollars, and lots of political battles to get to this point, so writers were quick to play up the space agency announcing its latest big milestone on Wednesday: the completion of the telescope's mirror.</p><p>"The James Webb Space Telescope Is Complete," <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/telescopes/a23670/james-webb-space-telescope-complete/" target="_blank">announced Popular Mechanics</a>. "World's Largest Space Telescope Is Complete, Expected to Launch in 2018," Space.com wrote in <a href="http://www.space.com/34593-james-webb-space-telescope-complete-2018-launch.html" target="_blank">a similar box-checking exercise</a>. And the Daily Mail went large with the&#xa0;<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3901046/World-s-biggest-space-telescope-complete-Super-Hubble-probe-spot-alien-life-launch-2018.html" target="_blank">all-caps declaration:</a>&#xa0;"World's biggest space telescope the James Webb is READY."</p><p>Who doesn't want to see a giant observatory go into space and take <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-best-hubble-telescope-pictures-2013-4">amazing photos of the universe</a>, maybe help unravel the mysteries of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/macho-black-holes-dark-matter-problem-2016-8/">dark matter</a>, and perhaps find out if the nearest Earth-like planet <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/proxima-b-habitable-atmosphere-jwst-2016-9">has a cozy, life-cradling atmosphere</a>?</p><p>I certainly do.</p><p>But in reality the $8.7 billion telescope is not finished, complete, or ready for launch.</p><p>On the contrary, the most harrowing stages of the telescope's mission have only just begun.</p><h2>The world's most expensive mirror</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>The rush of JWST news came out of a Nov. 2 press conference held by NASA.</p><p>The big update? Engineers just finished building the most difficult of JWST's three main chunks: <a href="http://jwst.nasa.gov/mirrors.html">the primary mirror segment</a>. (The other two segments are the sunshield and bus, or main chassis, of the spacecraft.)</p><p>The mirror itself is made out of 18 gold-plated panels of beryllium, since that metal is "both strong and lightweight," according to NASA.</p><p>Behind the shiny exterior there's also a suite of instruments and electronics that make it all work - and those have finally been installed and tested, along with the mirror's assembly.</p><p>"This telescope segment of NASA's most ambitious space observatory stands complete and tall in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center cleanroom," a narrator said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ybe4yr2no">dramatic YouTube video</a>.</p><p>Finishing the mirror is indeed a huge deal, since it's the most complex part of JWST. In fact, NASA said it had to create and perfect 10 new technologies to make it work.</p><p>The reason the mirror is segmented and not one piece, like Hubble's', is because it is seven times larger:</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Arranged like that, JWST's mirror is much too big to fit into any rocket. But it has a trick: The segments allow it to fold up and fit into the tight space of a fairing on top of a rocket.</p><p>In space, the segments will unfold and work together as one big mirror, helping focus normally invisible infrared light from the universe toward a suite of electronics.</p><p>"[S]cientists will peer back over 13.5 billion years to see the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness of the early universe," NASA employee Sarah Loff wrote in <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/james-webb-space-telescope-mirrors-will-piece-together-cosmic-puzzles">a Nov. 2 image feature</a>.</p><p>She continued:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Unprecedented infrared sensitivity will help astronomers [...] understand how galaxies assemble over billions of years. Webb will see behind cosmic dust clouds to see where stars and planetary systems are being born. It will also help reveal information about atmospheres of planets outside our solar system, and perhaps even find signs of the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe."</p><p>JWST is not out of the woods yet, though.</p><h2>Next up: 2 torturous years</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>Now that the telescope segment is finished, NASA must show that its marvel of engineering can survive launch aboard one of the world's most powerful rockets, then in the harsh environment of space.</p><p>Although the space agency has already shaken, chilled, and rattled a lot of JWST's components, it needs to see if they'll hold up fully assembled.</p><p>So NASA will now subject the mirror segment to those conditions in labs all over the country in the coming months.</p><p>"It - hopefully - is a formality," Jason Hylan, the lead engineer for JWST's instruments, told reporter Scott Dance <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/maryland-health/bs-hs-webb-telescope-mirror-20161102-story.html">at The Baltimore Sun</a>.</p><p>Rockets vibrate like crazy as they blast off, so shaking is one key test. Workers in 2015 finished building a house-size table to throttle the telescope, called the <a href="https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20150000768.pdf">Large Vibration Test System</a>, at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland - and that's where they're testing the mirror segment right now. The forces will exceed 10 times stronger than gravity's pull.</p><p>Next, JWST will go into one of the loudest rooms on Earth.</p><p>Called the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/james-webb-space-telescopes-isim-passes-severe-sound-test">Acoustic Test Chamber</a>, it's 42 feet tall and has 6-foot-wide speaker horns that will blast out 150 decibels of sound for 2 minutes at a time. (For comparison, a clap of thunder at sea level is about 120 decibels, while eardrums burst close to 150 decibels.)</p><p>If the mirror passes those punishing tests, it will fly aboard a giant jet and to Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Engineers will then pop it into a <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/news/chamber-a.html">giant vacuum chamber</a>, suck out all the air, and let it sit there - freezing at cryogenic temperatures - for 90 days. This will simulate what it's like for the mirror to sit completely in the dark of its sunshield some 930,000 miles away from Earth (more on this in a moment).</p><p>By August 2017, NASA hopes to ship the mirror to Northrop Grumman's facility in Los Angeles, where workers will attach it to the sunshield and bus, finally completing the telescope.</p><p>But JWST's tour still won't be over: It will have to make its way to South America.</p><h2>Cold and alone in deep space</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Arianespace/ESA/NASA" title_caption="A cutaway illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope (with gold mirror segments) folded up into an Ariane 5 rocket." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/581b5e5a362ca478018b6b52-960/ariane-5-rocket-esa-james-webb-space-telescope.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span><a href="http://jwst.nasa.gov/launch.html">Arianespace/ESA/NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">A cutaway illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope (with gold mirror segments) folded up into an Ariane 5 rocket.</p></div><p></p></div></div><p>With help from the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA will ship the assembled, folded-up telescope to a launch facility near Kourou, French Guiana, which is just north of Brazil.</p><p>JWST will <a href="http://jwst.nasa.gov/launch.html">launch from French Guiana</a> because the Earth's spin there is more than 1,000 mph, thanks to a significant bulge near the equator. (The launch facility is only 310 miles north of it.)</p><p>The extra speed of Earth's rotation there will help fling JWST into deep space. (For similar reasons, this is why almost all US rocket launches happen in the south; it requires less fuel to get into orbit.)</p><p>NASA, ESA, and Arianespace (the maker of the Ariane 5) will load JWST on top of the roughly $200 million rocket then launch it, ideally around October 2018.</p><p>Assuming the launch goes off without a hitch - the Ariane 5's safety record has been flawless over 74 missions since 2003 - JWST will begin a 30-day journey to a point four times farther than the moon is from Earth.</p><p>While it flies there, it will slowly unfurl its sunshield and instruments over the course of two weeks.</p><p>Here's how that might look, according to a Northrup Grumman animation:</p><p><div></div></p><p>Its final destination is a point where the gravitational pulls of Earth, the moon, and the sun cancel out into a very stable <a href="http://jwst.nasa.gov/orbit.html">Lagrange point, called L2</a>.</p><p>By hanging out at L2, the telescope will barely move, protecting its shiny and fragile sunshield from being torn to bits. JWST will also stay far away from the atmospheric gases of Earth, which can mess with its orbit. Staying in L2 will also help keep the mirror always pointed into the blackness of space, while its reflectors bouncing away warm sunlight.</p><p>After 4 to 6 months of staying in L2, the mirror will have cooled to a mind-numbing -388 degrees Fahrenheit (-233 degrees Celsius), allowing JWST to start its mission of peering at infrared light from the depths of space sometime in early 2019.</p><p>It should see objects that are 10 to 100 times dimmer than what Hubble can see, and make scientific breakthroughs for about 5 to 10 years. It could last much longer that that, however, as the long-lived Hubble telescope has proven.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="NASA/WMAP" title_caption="JWST's planned location in space beyond the moon." class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/581b68a9362ca473028b6bcd-960/l2-lagrange-point-nasa-wmap-labeled.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>NASA/WMAP</span></p><p class="caption">JWST's planned location in space beyond the moon.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Yet JWST's distance from Earth - 930,000 miles away - is perhaps the most nerve-wracking part of JWST for astronomers.<p>If anything goes wrong after launch, technicians can only reprogram the spacecraft remotely, assuming they can still talk to it. There is no rocket or spacecraft capable of sending a crewed mission to fix JWST, unlike the Hubble telescope - which astronauts serviced a few times from about 500 miles above the Earth.</p><p>A repair mission would be impossible, so just one physical problem that can't be fixed with a software update could render JWST into a $8.7 billion white elephant.</p><p>We'll be wishing NASA the best of luck if it reaches this cold and lonely point in deep space, nearly a million miles away from help.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/darpa-sst-space-surveillance-telescope-space-junk-debris-monitoring-2016-11">The US military has an ultra-powerful telescope it uses to monitor junk in space</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="hpdGE2NzE6kDzyhEiDGgDTo12tu5-MR1" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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