High powered telescope11/1/2022 The GMT and the Thirty Meter Telescope are a part of the U.S. The NSF grant positions the telescope to be one of the first in a new generation of large telescopes, approximately three times the size of any ground-based optical telescope built to date. These crucial advancements for the Giant Magellan Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile will allow astronomers to see farther into space with more detail than any other optical telescope before. “It’s a high bar, but hopefully the science contributions of Webb will be up there.The Giant Magellan Telescope, of which the University of Chicago is a founding member, has received a $17.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to accelerate the prototyping and testing of some of the most powerful optical and infrared technologies ever engineered. High powered telescope movie#It’s almost a Christmas movie in a way,” Stiavelli said following Webb’s liftoff. It starts badly, then the cavalry fixes it, then it’s a major success. Engineers deliberately left the fuel tank accessible for a top-off by visiting spacecraft, if and when such technology becomes available. NASA is shooting for 10 years of operational life from Webb. It’s now up to Webb to draw even closer to the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, its infrared vision keener and more far-reaching than Hubble’s is in the shorter visible and ultraviolet wavelengths. Spacewalking repairs by astronauts transformed Hubble into a beloved marvel that has revolutionized humanity’s understanding of the universe, casting its eyes as far back as 13.4 billion years. That’s because Webb will be too far away for rescuing, as was necessary when Hubble turned out to have blurry vision from a defective mirror. Hawley, in fact, is more stressed over Webb than he was for Hubble, which he released into orbit from space shuttle Discovery in 1990. The Hubble Space Telescope will be a tough act to follow, according to Stiavelli and retired astronaut-astronomer Steven Hawley, even though Webb is 100 times more powerful. A few of the launch controllers wore Santa caps in celebration. Last-minute technical snags bumped the launch nearly a week, then gusty wind pushed it to Christmas. Nelson bowed out along with a congressional delegation and many contractors who worked on the telescope.Īround the world, astronomers and countless others tuned in, anxious to see Webb finally taking flight after years of setbacks. With the launch falling on Christmas and a global surge in COVID-19 cases, there were fewer spectators at the French Guiana launch site than expected. NASA partnered with the European and Canadian space agencies to build and launch the new 7-ton telescope, with thousands of people from 29 countries working on it since the 1990s. Intended as a successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope, the long-delayed James Webb is named after NASA’s administrator during the 1960s. But he cautioned: “There are still innumerable things that have to work and they have to work perfectly … we know that in great reward there is great risk.” “We are going to discover incredible things that we never imagined,” Nelson said following liftoff, speaking from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called Webb a time machine that will provide “a better understanding of our universe and our place in it: who we are, what we are, the search that’s eternal.” Otherwise, the observatory won’t be able to peer back in time 13.7 billion years as anticipated, within a mere 100 million years of the universe-forming Big Bang. It will take a month to get there and another five months before its infrared eyes are ready to start scanning the cosmos.įirst, the telescope’s enormous mirror and sunshield need to unfurl they were folded origami-style to fit into the rocket’s nose cone. The $10 billion observatory hurtled toward its destination 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away, or more than four times beyond the moon. “What an amazing Christmas present,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission chief. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope soared from French Guiana on South America’s northeastern coast, riding a European Ariane rocket into the Christmas morning sky. Stay on top of breaking news and weather with the FOX8 mobile app.
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