The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The "James Webb" space telescope has launched into space

2021-12-25T16:50:09.412Z


After a good 30 years of planning, the time had come: a rocket brought the "James Webb" space telescope into space. Soon it should allow glimpses far back into the past of the universe.


Enlarge image

The start of "James Webb" in French Guiana

Photo: JM GUILLON / ESA / HANDOUT / EPA

The "James Webb" space telescope has successfully launched.

An Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from the spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana at 1:20 p.m. Central European Time and dropped the telescope a little later.

In about a month, the infrared telescope is expected to reach its orbit, one and a half million kilometers from Earth.

It is intended to explore the early days of the universe 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

It is one of the largest scientific projects in history and heralds a new era in astronomy.

The new telescope was jointly developed by the US space agency NASA, the European space agency ESA and the Canadian space agency CSA.

The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, the University of Cologne and several German companies also took part.

The project, which started in 1989, was originally supposed to go into operation in the early 2000s.

However, new problems delayed the project for years, and the costs tripled to almost ten billion dollars.

The new telescope far exceeds its predecessor "Hubble" in size and complexity.

Its mirror is six and a half meters in diameter and had to be folded in order to even fit into the Ariane 5 rocket.

Start was postponed several times

The launch of the rocket now also had to be postponed several times.

The first delay was attributed to an accident during launch preparations in late November and the second to a communication problem.

The telescope is named after James Webb, who headed Nasa in the 1960s.

dab / dpa / AFP

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-12-25

You may like

Trends 24h

Tech/Game 2024-03-27T18:05:36.686Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.