After decades of planning and around twelve years late, the most expensive space telescope ever built in space history was successfully launched into space on Saturday. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), built jointly by space agencies in Europe, the USA and Canada, is intended to explore the oldest galaxies in space.
It took off from the European space station Kourou in French Guiana and is on board an Ariane launcher. The journey to the target orbit, which is around 1.5 million kilometers away, takes around four weeks.
James Webb Telescope is to provide Big Bang findings
Scientists hope that the images from the James Webb Telescope will provide information about the time after the Big Bang, around 13.8 billion years ago, among other things. The first data and images from the telescope are not expected until summer at the earliest. At the start of the mission, NASA had identified 344 critical points that threatened the planned use of the telescope.
According to the operators, the James Webb telescope was developed for around 30 years and cost around $ 10 billion. It exceeds the capabilities of its predecessor, the well-known Hubble telescope, many times over.
Swiss team secures observation time at the Webb telescope
Swiss researchers are also delighted that the largest and most powerful telescope “James Webb” to date has been shot into the universe. Several teams from Swiss universities were able to secure coveted observation time with the space telescope.
Researchers who were not directly involved in the development of the James Webb telescope had to apply for observation time. Almost every fourth of the over a thousand applications was approved. This also includes projects from the Universities of Geneva and Bern, which also deal with exoplanets. (SDA)