The James Webb Space Telescope: A New Era of Space Exploration

 

“The James Webb Space Telescope was specifically designed to see the first stars and galaxies that were formed in the Universe.” – John. M. Grunsfeld

I’m sure you’ve probably heard about it or even read about it yourself. The James Webb Space Telescope(JWST) has finally reached its destination in Space after about a month of travelling from Earth after its launch. The JWST is the most powerful Telescope that has ever been launched into Space. It’s going to help us see much further into the Universe and learn much more about its origins. So, what exactly is this about? How does it work? How is it going to change our perspective of our Universe and Space in General? All of these and more would be discussed in detail in this article.

     For starters, the JWST is named after, just as you probably guessed, James Webb. He was actually the 2nd ever administrator of NASA and a bureaucrat appointed by the Government. He contributed immensely to Space Science research and sending astronauts into Space. He is widely regarded as the reason NASA still does Science. The idea for this Telescope was conceived in the 1980s and it was codenamed Next Generation Space Telescope. However, its release kept on getting delayed for a very long time. At first, the initial budget planned for it was $1B but quite surprisingly, it ended up amassing a total cost of $11B. It was finally launched on December 25, 2021 and successfully entered into orbit on January 24, earlier this year, and it is planned that by July 12, it will produce its first actual science images.

The Problem Facing Us

      Now, before the launch of the JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope(HST), which was launched in 1990, was our most powerful Telescope in Space. It produced very sharp images and really heightened our knowledge of the Universe. However, it had one major shortcoming. Hold Up!! Before we can understand this shortcoming, we need to learn how our Universe works and a phenomenon known as the Electromagnetic Spectrum(E-M Spectrum). To start with, the E-M Spectrum is a distribution of all Electromagnetic Radiation divided into different portions with each representing one specific Electromagnetic Wave in correspondence to their specific wavelengths and frequencies. It is summarized in the image below:

     As you can see in the diagram, the Visible Light Spectrum is more or less at the centre of the E-M Spectrum. The objects in the Universe are guided by this Spectrum. Now, normally, we use Telescopes to discover objects in Outer Space and take images of them. However, the Universe has existed for a very long time(it is about 13.7 Billion Years Old) and so a lot has occurred in it. For us to learn more about this vast Universe of ours, we need to go way back in time. The problem, though, is that as we try to explore deeper into the Universe, we go beyond the Light Spectrum and move into the Infrared Spectrum. Going back to the major shortcoming of the HST, it operates only in the Visible Light Spectrum which automatically makes it impossible for us to get deeper into the Universe. To make matters worse, it is a well-known fact that our Universe is continuously expanding. To crown it all, based on Hubble’s Law, our Universe is also continuously accelerating in its expansion. In fact, according to Neil deGrasse Tyson, 

“At some point, the Universe would have expanded so much and accelerated so significantly that the information related to its Origins would be beyond our Horizon. All the Galaxies of the Night Sky would have accelerated beyond our Horizon and we would have only the information from our Milky Way Galaxy……Therefore, the next Generation of Cosmic Explorers won’t be able to have access to these other Galaxies which are the source of our knowledge of Cosmology, the Big Bang and everything we know about the history of our Universe.”

     Of course, if the Universe is expanding, then it is right for us to say that the information in Space that could tell us more about the beginning of our Universe is also moving away from the Light Spectrum and our line of sight in general. Therefore, to keep pace with our ever-expanding Universe, the JWST had to be constructed. In reality, though, this isn’t our first ever Infrared Telescope launched into Space. On the contrary, it is the 4th of its kind to be launched but is expected to achieve much more than its predecessors, the latest of the three being the Spitzer Space Telescope which launched on August 25th, 2003 and completed its space mission on January 30th, 2020.

     The JWST would also help us discover Exoplanets faster and much more accurately. Using the science of Spectroscopy, we would be able to accurately define the chemical make-up of the discovered Exoplanets.

A New Era Of Space Science

     If we were to consider it carefully, though, the talk of our Universe and Outer Space generally is diminishing. If you think about it for a moment, when we were Kids, there were a lot of TV shows and School Classes that educated us on Outer Space. However, we don’t seem to have so much enthusiasm about these things anymore. According to a Harris Poll/LEGO Survey, twice as many American Kids (29%) now want to be Youtubers than NASA Employees (11%). If we want to produce another generation of Space Explorers who would continue to make breakthroughs in Space Research, I think it’s important that we instill in them a love for Outer Space from Childhood especially since what Children see can have a lasting impression on them. I strongly believe that the JWST would help us pull more children towards Space Exploration. If well utilized, the JWST could become more than our most powerful Telescope but could also be what would change Space Science forever in that we would have much more images of the Universe, have a lot more Space facts to teach in schools and also help more kids and teenagers see the need to join the Space Industry and even establish companies to intensify our Space Exploration.

     In Conclusion, I believe that the JWST is more than just a Telescope but might just be the key to the Space Revolution we’ve been looking for.