This is
the wonderful moment the JWST parts ways with the rocket that launched it to outer
space. Savor the photo, it's the last image we'll ever get of the telescope.
The JWST –
the biggest, most expensive, and most powerful space telescope ever built – was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on 25th of
December after numerous delays and setbacks. The European Space Agency (ESA)
has now released a real-time film of the telescope’s separation from the Ariane
5 launch vehicle and the following solar array deployment, a maneuver that took
place just under 30 minutes after its launch.
Filmed
from Ariane 5’s upper stage, the movie was communicated in near real-time
during the launch on Christmas Day, but the original transmission was poor. ESA
has since refined the video and made a clip that's enough to make Stanley
Kubrick's mouth water.
By the end
of the first month of 2021, the telescope is set to reach its ultimate
destination – L2, the second Lagrangian Point, around 1.5 million kilometers
(932,056 miles) from Planet Earth. This is considerably further from Earth than
its ancestor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which revolved just 547 kilometers
(340 miles) above Earth.
These next
few weeks will be very nervous back at HQ in Baltimore’s Space Telescope
Science Institute. As the JWST journeys through space alone, it will need to disclose
and effectively deploy, an intense difficult operation that depend on on
thousands of parts, 50 separate deployments, and 178 release apparatuses. Every
part of this procedure has to work perfectly or else the mission could be put
in danger.
If its
treacherous voyage proves successful, the JWST will reform astronomy and our
understanding of the universe. Gazing into the depths of the cosmos, the
telescope will sparkle light onto the birth of the first galaxies and possibly
even detect far away exoplanets that could potentially harbor life.
Godspeed
and good luck, JWST – don’t screw up!
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