The James Webb telescope has a bona fide launch date
Source: ARS Technica
NASA announced in August that the James Webb Space Telescope had passed its final ground-based tests and was being prepared for shipment to its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. Now, the oft-delayed $10 billion telescope has an official launch date: December 18, 2021.
The date was announced on Wednesday by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the launch provider, Arianespace. The space telescope will launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.
Why is NASA's most expensive scientific instrument ever launching on a European rocket? Because the European Space Agency is conducting the launch for NASA in return for a share of observation time using the infrared telescope. Webb will observe wavelengths of light longer than those of the Hubble Space telescope, and this should allow the new instrument to see the earliest galaxies of the Universe.
To the frustration of scientists and policymakers, myriad technical problems have delayed Webb's development over the last decade, leading to enormous cost overruns. Some of this is understandable, as unfurling the 20-meter-long telescope in deep space requires 50 major deployments and 178 major release mechanisms. All of these systems must work or the instrument will fail. There is no easy means of servicing the telescope at its location near a Sun-Earth LaGrange point 1.5 million km from Earth, or four times the distance to the Moon.
Read more: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/the-james-webb-telescope-has-a-bona-fide-launch-date/
I cannot wait for this telescope to start gathering science.
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https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/
The 5 Massive New Telescopes That Will Change Astronomy Forever
https://gizmodo.com/the-5-massive-new-telescopes-that-will-change-astronomy-1610529758
Those of us who love science and have watched NASA videos of JWST being built piece-by-piece over many years will be almost too nervous to watch the launch. Few Americans realize the enormous effort that's gone into building it. The process of manufacturing those 18 mirror sections is amazing and a form of art.
Given the very limited scope of my knowledge of astronomy, it still excites me as a retired engineer to read from many sources the importance of this telescope for long-term space science.
Go here for NASA's main page for their JWST mission: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/about/index.html
Be sure to browse the sidebar sections labeled "Science", "The Observatory" and "The Instruments".
Engineers posed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shortly after it emerged from Chamber A at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Dec. 1, 2017.
Credits: NASA/Chris Gunn
........to the Team!
KY
