FROM THE EDITOR

All being well, by the time you read this, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will have launched (finally) and should be on its way to the second Lagrange point, a spot 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth where the gravity from the Sun and Earth will lock the satellite into a fixed position between the two. With this feat, the JWST will be able to peer back at the seeds of some of the first stars in the Universe being sown. It could rewrite our origin story.

It’s the most ambitious project NASA has ever undertaken that doesn’t involve human lives. It’s also one of the most expensive. The telescope’s tab is floating around the $10bn mark – over three times the price of the Perseverance mission that’s currently exploring Mars, and 10 times the cost of the Rosetta mission that explored a comet. To make matters worse, this is one of the most delicate, sensitive pieces of equipment ever built. A tiny mote of dust in the wrong place could derail the mission. And it’s got to launch into space, then deploy and unpack its massive sunshield and solar panels without a hitch. My guess is that there are precious few fingernails to chew at NASA right now.

You can find out about the plans for JWST on p25. But it’s not the only big idea we’re tackling this issue – there are plenty more developments in the worlds of science and technology that are set to make splashes in 2022, from space stations (p50) and the right to a clean environment (p60), to augmented intelligence (p72) and cancer vaccines (p44). Get the lowdown on these topics and you’ll have a leg-up on the ideas that are likely to shape the year ahead.