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NASA, James Webb Space Telescope’s New Launch Offset: Historic Mission To Take Off “Not Before December 24th”
There is no peace for the James Webb Space Telescope: after nearly 15 years of shifts, controversy and technical problems, we may know the official launch date of this historic mission.
The largest and most powerful telescope ever built was to be launched into deep space in 2007, after more than 10 years of work by NASA, ESA and CSA – the Canadian Space Agency.
The most powerful telescope ever built
The James Webb Telescope is the largest, most powerful and technologically advanced space telescope ever built: it took 25 years, technicians and engineers from 15 countries around the world, and around $ 10 billion for the mission to start.
Today James Webb stands – ready for launch a few days ago – on top of ESA’s Ariane 5 rocket, which will take him out of the Earth’s atmosphere from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana.
The James Webb mission is widely regarded as the most ambitious space mission since the Apollo missions took their first step on the moon. Indeed, it is a mission of epochal importance, as the Webb Space Telescope will finally be able to study galaxy and planetary system formation, investigate the origin of life, and “see” the history of the universe from the very beginning.
James Webb will be directly observing a portion of space and time that has never been observed before, casting his infrared gaze as far back as 13.5 billion years ago, when the first stars and galaxies in the universe formed.
The technical challenges are endless: After launching about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, it will take at least six months to prepare all instrumentation before it reaches its destination at Lagrange’s L2 between Earth and the Sun.
Place its mirrors, solar panels and other small systems; only then will he be able to cool down, realign, calibrate the systems and begin the proper mission to finally explore the secrets hidden in the early life of the universe.
James Webb: start “no earlier than December 24”
So the wait seems over: in a short official note, NASA announces the latest launch shift.
According to the US Space Agency website, “James Webb’s team is working on the problem of communication between the observatory and the vehicle’s launch system.”
This means that “the start is delayed until December 24 at the earliest” – with high hopes that the long-awaited mission will start before Christmas Eve. Confirmation of launch, according to NASA, will take place on December 17.
This is only two days behind the last scheduled launch date on December 22nd. James Webb will be the most important scientific observatory ever sent into space, capable of unraveling the innermost secrets of our solar system and observing stars and distant worlds with unprecedented precision.
Meanwhile, James Webb is finally in the last place on the planet, on top of the huge ESA Ariane 5 spacecraft stationed on the Atlantic coast of French Guiana, awaiting the magical moment when the most ambitious scientific space mission in history.
