[slate]
Sure. The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope which
is the most successful telescope in history. Webb
will be bigger than Hubble and more powerful and be able
to see things that are further away. [slate]
[slate]
Webb is able to see galaxies that are so far away that the light
that those galaxies emitted has traveled for most of the age of the universe
to get to our telescope. That means we’re seeing
light that was emitted just after the Big Bang when the first
stars and galaxies first started to form.
Those galaxies then evolved over time to be galaxies like our own
Milky Way that we live in. [slate]
[slate]
Webb is the successor to the Hubble, but it’s not a replacement. We would like
love to have the two telescopes working together. Hubble works
in ultraviolet light which is bluer than the light that we can see
and in visible light and maybe a little bit into the near infrared
which is redder than we can see.
Webb will pick up with gold-colored light.
It absorbs everything bluer than that because the mirrors are actually coated
in gold. And reflects red light and infrared light
out to where we’re seeing the heat from the stars and galaxies
in the distant universe. By working together
Hubble and Webb will give us a multicolored picture of the universe.
[slate]
[slate] Webb will study exoplanets which are
planets that are in orbit around other stars. And there’s a very powerful
technique that we can use when the planet goes across the
face of its host star and the light from the star goes
through the atmosphere of the planet on its way to our telescope.
When that happens we can determine the
constituents of that atmosphere, what it’s made up and does it have organic
chemistry with molecules like methane and
water. So Webb will study planets like
gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn in our
own solar system. But we can also take it down to
Earth-like planets, small rocky planets, that may even have liquid
water on their surface. This is what we think are the conditions
for there to be life on other planets. [slate]
[slate]
Webb is such a big telescope - 21 feet in diameter -
that it’s too big to fit inside the rocket that we’re launching on.
So we have to fold it up like origami
or like a transformer. So after the launch
all of the pieces of Webb will fold out in space autonomously
First a giant tennis court sized
sunshield that protects Webb from the heat and light
of the Sun. Next we’ll fold out the side wings of
the primary mirror and the secondary mirror so that the
telescope can work out in space and collect the light
from the distant stars and galaxies. This is a huge engineering
feat requiring thousands of engineers working over
the years to put this together and to test it to make sure it’s all
going to work when it’s in space. [slate]
[slate]
Well the best way to keep up to date with Webb is to just look at the
website nasa.gov. But for the launch itself
you can watch that on NASA TV. And if you want
really interested and want to keep up to date with what
is happening from day to day after the launch, we have a blog
Blogs.nasa.gov/webb - w.e.b.b
[slate]
I’ve worked on this telescope in my current capability
since 2002. Almost 20 years. When I started
working on Webb my children were little, they were
in kindergarten. And now they’re going to college
and even out of college. So it’s a little bit the same way
working on Webb for that long, I’ve seen it go from just a
design to the hardware, the observatory,
I’ve seen it all put together and now it’s going to be launched
And that’s a little bit like sending your kids off to college.
You’re really excited about what they’re going to do with their future
but it’s a little bit sad to see it go as well. And that’s how I feel
about Webb. Really excited about the science it’s going to do
but this is a big change in the phase of the project as we
go from building, to launching it, to using it.