NASA and the European Space Agency recently released the first high-definition images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched this past December. The telescope cost $10 billion to manufacture and took 20 years to complete. Since its launch, James Webb traveled to a location 15 million kilometers away from us, at a point known as “Lagrange,” named after the French-Italian scientist Joseph-Louis Lagrange who discovered it more than two centuries ago. This point is unique in that it is one of few regions in space where the gravitational pull of two large celestial bodies has no effect on a third body that is usually smaller in size, such as a satellite or spacecraft. The goal of launching the giant telescope was the desire to “look back” in time by capturing any light from the darkest and smallest points in space, with the hope of obtaining new information and images about the universe, and perhaps catching the first moments of the life of stars and galaxies. Astronomers are excited about the remarkable images that the telescope will reveal, which will inevitably lead to a scientific revolution and provoke a rapture greater than those caused by the images taken by the Hubble telescope in 1995, which first enabled us to look into the distant past. Back then, for the first time ever, thousands of galaxies appeared over 12 billion light-years away, when the Hubble mirror was pointed at a dark spot in the sky that appeared to the naked eye devoid of all light or stars. The new telescope is designed to capture light waves in the infrared range, which is important in the study of astronomy because most of the visible light coming from it is absorbed by the surrounding dust before it reaches Earth. The sensitivity of the James Webb Telescope to infrared rays requires keeping it cool and preventing any heat from blocking the rays that are captured. This function is carried out by the telescope’s sun shield – which is the size of a tennis court – and it keeps the telescope cool from the heat of Earth and the sun. The James Webb Telescope will start sending images this summer and will inevitably help us learn more about the universe, which is approximately 14 billion years old. The telescope will not need maintenance or fuel for the next 20 years. The development of the telescope contributed to many other inventions, including lenses and glasses that are now used in medicine, but there’s no doubt that its biggest contribution will be the ability to investigate space, satisfy the curiosity of scientists, and provide us with insights about the origin of our planet. –Ahmed Al-Sarraf (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)
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