James Webb Space Telescope To Launch In December

Space The James Webb Space / NASA. The world has been anxiously awaiting this event since 2010: The date to launch the largest space telesco...

Space The James Webb Space / NASA.

The world has been anxiously awaiting this event since 2010: The date to launch the largest space telescope in history, the James Webb, has been set. 

In December, NASA is scheduled to launch the huge $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is sometimes billed as the successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope. NPR correspondents Rhitu Chatterjee and Nell Greenfieldboyce talk about this powerful new instrument and why building it took two decades.

According to a report by Vox, the long-awaited successor to the Hubble telescope is scheduled to launch on Dec. 18, 2021. The James Webb, “named for the man who led NASA in the decade leading up to the moon landing,” will be propelled to nearly a million miles away, allowing humanity to see things that have never before been seen. 

The space telescope is being built and launched by NASA “in partnership with the European Space Agency and Canada,” Vox noted. “The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy,” Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and astrophysicist at MIT, told Vox. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time.” It’s unclear how much longer the aging Hubble, which has been in space at 340 miles above the earth for three decades, will be able to remain in service.

Originally, Webb was planned to launch in 2010 at a cost of roughly $1 billion. However, its cost has since skyrocketed to $10 billion, and it’s 11 years overdue. With this kind of price tag, the telescope better work - especially because it will be so far from the earth -- roughly “four times the distance from the Earth to the moon,” Vox explained. This means “it will be unserviceable by human hands if it breaks.

How will Webb surpass Hubble?

The Webb will surpass the Hubble by allowing astronomers to not only look farther out in space but also “further back in time,” as it searches for the first stars and galaxies of the universe. Careful studies of numerous exoplanets — planets that orbit stars other than our sun — will be possible, even allowing scientists to “embark on a search for signs of life there,” Vox noted.

“We’re going right up to the edge of the observable universe with Webb,” said Caitlin Casey, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. “And yeah, we’re excited to see what’s there.” The Webb, is “about 100 times more powerful than Hubble,” says Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at NASA who works on the Webb. While Hubble’s mirror is 7.8 feet in diameter, Webb’s “gold-hued mirrors combine for a diameter of 21.3 feet.”

With this size, the Webb will need to travel to its launch site via land and sea, Scientific American reported. Webb’s journey will begin in Redondo Beach, California, at the Northrop Grumman facility where the folded-up spacecraft will be placed into a specialized shipping container that will protect it “from humidity, vibrations and fluctuating temperatures.”

Later this month, the “high-tech cocoon” will be placed on a boat set for about two weeks at sea, which will include traveling through the Panama Canal and entering the Caribbean sometime in early October — “during hurricane season” — and arriving at the port and European Space Agency (ESA) launch site of Kourou, French Guiana, where it will undergo preparations for the December launch, Scientific American explained.