James Webb Space Telescope
Telescopio espacial James Webb
- Date
- 2021 · confidence high
- Place
- Guiana Space Centre, Kourou, French Guiana (launch); NASA Goddard; the L2 point
- Credited to
- NASA, ESA and CSA; Northrop Grumman; first images in July 2022
- Field
- Communication
What it is
An infrared telescope with a 6.5 m segmented mirror deployed in space 1.5 million km away, cooled by a five-layer sunshield. It observes the earliest galaxies and the atmospheres of exoplanets.
What it led to
- The revision of models of early galaxy formation
- The search for biosignatures on exoplanets
- The engineering of large deployable structures in space
Built on
- Discovery of Infrared Radiation1800
- ISEE-3: first halo orbit at a Lagrange point and first comet visited1978
- Ariane 1 rocket and Arianespace24 de diciembre de 1979
- Hubble Space Telescope1990
- First Hubble servicing mission (STS-61)2-13 de diciembre de 1993
- Gaia: census and three-dimensional map of the Milky Way2013-2025
- Hubble telescope
- beryllium mirrors
- space cryogenics
Made possible
- exoplanet atmosphere spectroscopy
- Habitable Worlds Observatory