NASA’s next-gen James Webb Space Telescope that will soon be joining the legendary Hubble Space Telescope has finally finished the testing phase and is ready to be moved to the launch site. That’s good news for everyone who has worked on building the space observatory but faced setbacks due to delays.
NASA announced the completion of testing saying, “Webb’s many tests and checkpoints were designed to ensure that the world’s most complex space science observatory will operate as designed once in space.”
An origami that will unfold in space
James Webb is a joint venture between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency. It’s built to unravel the mysteries of our universe’s origins and peek into the past to know more about the formation of stars.
The telescope opened its golden mirror for the last time on Earth in May. There was a time when NASA hoped to launch the telescope in 2007, so it’s been a long journey to finally finish testing in 2021. Preparations to ship the telescope will be finished by next month. James Webb is slated to leave Earth’s gravity aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, as soon as October 31.
James Webb is packed like origami and will unfold itself once in orbit, which is almost a million miles from our planet. It will start science operations six months after the launch if all things go as planned. ESA calls the telescope “the next great space science observatory.”
Hunting for life beyond Earth
James Webb can potentially find life signatures on other planets in a short duration. The space telescope was earlier scheduled to launch in 2020; however, after the coronavirus pandemic hit, the launch date had to be moved to 2021. The telescope will now be launched in November.
It will join the Hubble Space telescope that ran into a technical glitch, forcing it to shut operations for a while. But NASA managed to fix the iconic telescope and it is now back to its snapping great pictures of the universe. The space telescope had stopped all its operation after its payload computer and the backup computer went into safe mode.
