The Hubble telescope has been highly successful over the decades. Since its launch back in the ’90s, the gear operated by NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency) has helped astronomers uncover a lot of wonders of the Universe, including galaxies, stars, quasars, and so on.
But you know how things go in astronomy: scientists make a lot of upgrades. After the huge success of Hubble, it’s time to get it replaced by another telescope. The James Webb Space Telescope is the one replacing it, and it will be deployed in December after a long series of delays.
Aiming for the mysteries of the early Universe
The James Webb Space Telescope will have a much deeper look at galaxies and the way they formed. The successor of Hubble has arrived at French Guiana to prepare for the launch, according to the BBC. On only a week until Christmas, Webb will be launched into space to make us all understand the Universe better.
Learning more about the first galaxies that illuminated the Cosmos is one of the purposes of the next-generation telescope. By aiming its tools at them, this means that the telescope will also look back in time. This phenomenon happens due to the time needed by the light to arrive at Earth from the most distant parts of the Universe.
Even for light, which travels at the fastest speed possible, according to the laws of physics, time is sometimes a luxury it cannot afford. Therefore, telescopes are seeing distant stars and other space objects by the way they were when the light left them, not how they are now.
The James Webb Space Telescope is a joint project of three major space agencies: NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. The cost implied for the project is about $10 billion, as Wikipedia informs us.
