Hello everyone and welcome to ZD Tech, ZDNet’s daily editorial podcast. My name is Clarisse Treilles, and today I’m talking about James-Webb telescope and the scientific enthusiasm it arouses, in pursuit of the Big Bang.
If you’ve come across breathtaking images of space lately, you’ve probably just seen the fruits of the labor of the James-Webb Telescope.
Launched a little less than a year ago, it has managed to capture the pillars of creation with incredible precision, 27 years after the first shot taken by its predecessor, the Hubble telescope.
Located 6,500 light-years from good old Earth in the Eagle Nebula, the Pillars of Creation depict twinkling stars forming in dense clouds of gas and dust.
infrared telescope
If this image coming straight from the depths of the Universe has been widely shared on the web, it reveals the immense progress made in space imagery.
Concretely, the James-Webb telescope observes the world at infrared wavelengths. This scientific discovery makes it possible to look deeper into space to see the first stars and galaxies in the universe that formed after the Big Bang.
Infrared light also makes visible stars and planetary systems that form inside clouds of dust that would otherwise be opaque.
By comparison, the Hubble telescope operated on an ultraviolet wavelength, a technology less suited to observing objects in the distance.
A very expensive project
James-Webb’s goal is to help scientists search for the first galaxies formed after the creation of the universe and to study the evolution of these galaxies. The new view of the pillars will help researchers learn more about star formation through a much more accurate count of newly formed stars and amounts of gas and dust.
The Webb Telescope was designed to operate for a minimum of five years, but the goal is for the overall mission lifetime to be over 10 years. Because the logic is profitability. The project is expected to cost NASA $9.7 billion over 24 years. Yes you heard right, 9.7 billion. As for the development of the spacecraft itself, it cost about $8.8 billion and an additional $861 million is planned to support five years of operation.