NEW EYES IN THE SKY
After many delays, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) might actually be launching soon. It’s a large infrared telescope with a massive 6.5-metre primary mirror, much larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2.4-metre primary mirror. Its intended use will be to collect information, in the form of light and radiation, to uncover more about the history of the universe.
The mirror comprises
18 smaller hexagonal mirrors made from one of the lightest metals on Earth: beryllium. Although the JWST is not the first infrared telescope to journey into space, it will be capable of capturing images of the universe in unrivalled detail. Generally speaking, the bigger the mirror, the more infrared wavelengths can be collected by the telescope, which produces a higher resolution image. Thanks to its large mirror array, the JWST would be able to capture an image of a five cent piece from around 24 miles away.
It has been a long and bumpy road for NASA’s next-gen telescope since its proposal back in the early 1990s. A wave of technical, financial and pandemic hurdles have kept the JWST on the ground. But now NASA has revealed that its target launch date is 31 October 2021.