James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
The JWST was developed by NASA in cooperation with the European and Canadian space agencies. It was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in December 2021 from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, and is now orbiting the Sun, 930,000 miles from the Earth. This is further than the Moon, which is “only” 240,000 miles away from us.
More than 20 years in the making, this telescope is the largest to have ever been sent to space. It is so big, it couldn’t fit in the rocket and was folded like some elaborate origami. Once in space, all of its parts had to unfold and snap into position without any humans around to help.
The JWST has now started doing science. Just like the Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST will shed a brand new light on the Universe and enable discoveries we can’t yet imagine. Contrary to Hubble, it won’t observe the Universe in visible light, but rather in infrared light. The special infrared cameras aboard the JWST will reveal stars within clouds of dust, planets close to their host star and the first galaxies to have formed at the beginning of the Universe.
