(Updated with NASA statement)
by Steve Gorman
December 25 (Reuters) – NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to help unravel the mysteries of the universe and the birth of the first galaxies, was launched on Saturday by a European rocket, ushering in a new era of astronomy.
This revolutionary infrared telescope, at a cost of some 9 billion dollars (7.9 billion euros), took off on Saturday at 12:20 GMT (1:30 p.m. Paris time) from the Kourou space center of the European Space Agency (ESA ), in French Guiana, aboard the European rocket Ariane 5.
“From a rainforest to the frontiers of time, James Webb begins a journey to the birth of the universe,” said a NASA commentator as the two-stage launcher, equipped with two booster rockets, was leaving its launch pad in a cloudy sky.
After a 27-minute hypersonic journey into space, the six-ton instrument was released from the top stage of the French-made rocket, about 865 miles (nearly 1,400 kilometers) above the Earth. It should gradually expand to the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days, as it will sail on its own.
Live video captured by a camera mounted on the top stage of the rocket showed the Webb slowly pulling away after being dropped, eliciting cheers and applause from flight engineers in the mission control center.
Flight controllers confirmed moments later, as the Webb probe’s solar panel was deployed, that its power supply was on.
The telescope will take 29 days to reach its final destination in solar orbit (point “Lagrange 2”), about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, or about four times the distance of our planet from the Moon.
Unlike its predecessor – the 30-year-old Hubble Space Telescope – which revolves around the Earth, Web will be placed in the same orbit as the earth around the sun.
This telescope, named after a former NASA administrator in the 1960s, is 100 times more powerful than Hubble. It is expected to revolutionize astronomers’ understanding of the universe by observing parts of the cosmos dating back a million years after the “Big Bang”.
Webb will primarily observe the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, allowing him to scan the gas and dust clouds where stars are born, while Hubble primarily operated in the optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.
COSMOLOGICAL HISTORY LESSON
The main mirror of the new telescope is made up of 18 hexagonal segments in gold-coated beryllium metal, which gives it a large surface area allowing it to collect more light and observe objects farther away, therefore older than Hubble. or any other telescope.
According to astronomers, it will provide access to hitherto unobtainable information about the cosmos, dating barely 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical explosion that triggered the expansion of the world. observable universe about 13.8 billion years ago.
Hubble’s observations dated back to around 400 million years after the Big Bang, revealing objects that Webb will be able to scrutinize with greater precision.
Apart from the formation of the first stars in the universe, it will also make it possible to study the super-massive black holes which would occupy the center of distant galaxies.
Webb’s instruments also make it possible to search for evidence of potentially life-supporting atmospheres around dozens of recently documented exoplanets – celestial bodies orbiting distant stars – and to observe worlds much closer to us, like Mars and Titan, Saturn’s frozen moon.
This telescope is the result of an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with European and Canadian space agencies. Northrop Grumman Corp NOC.N is the prime contractor. The launch of the telescope by Arianespace is part of the European contribution.
“The world gave us this telescope, and we gave it back to the world today,” Gregory Robinson, director of the Webb program at NASA, said during a post-launch press briefing.
Astronomical operation of the telescope, which will be managed from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is expected to begin in the summer of 2022, after about six months of alignment and calibration of Webb’s mirrors and instruments.
That’s when NASA plans to release the first batch of images taken by Webb, which are designed to last up to 10 years.
(Steve Gorman report in Los Angeles; French version Jean-Michel Bélot)