Washington (AFP) – NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Wednesday that the organization will reveal the “deepest image of our universe ever taken” on July 12, thanks to the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope.
“If you think about it, this is farther away than humanity has ever seen,” Nelson told a news conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the $ 10 billion observatory business center that opened in December. of last year and is now in orbit around the Sun one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth. A marvel of engineering, Webb is able to see more of the world than any other telescope before him, thanks to its huge primary mirror and infrared-focused instruments, allowing it to look through dust and gas. “It will explore objects in the solar system and the atmospheres of exoplanets orbiting other stars, giving us clues as to whether their atmosphere is potentially similar to ours,” Nelson added, speaking by telephone while isolated with Covid. “He can answer some of the questions we have: Where do we come from? What else is out there? Who are we? And of course, he will answer some questions that we do not even know what the questions are.” Webb’s infrared capabilities allow him to look deeper into time in the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. As the Universe expands, light from the first stars shifts from the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths they emitted to larger infrared wavelengths – which Webb is equipped to detect in unprecedented resolution. At present, the oldest cosmological observations date back to 330 million years after the Big Bang, but with Webb’s capabilities, astronomers believe they can easily break the record.
20 years of life
In more good news, NASA Deputy Managing Director Pam Melroy has revealed that, thanks to an effective launch by NASA partner Arianespace, the telescope could remain operational for 20 years, twice its life expectancy. “Not only will these 20 years allow us to go deeper into history and time, but we will delve deeper into science because we have the opportunity to learn and grow and make new observations,” he said. NASA also plans to share the first Webb spectroscopy of a distant planet known as an exoplanet on July 12, said NASA lead scientist Thomas Zurbuchen. Spectroscopy is a tool for analyzing the chemical and molecular composition of distant objects, and a planetary spectrum can help characterize its atmosphere and other properties, such as whether it has water and what its soil is like. “From the beginning, will we look at these worlds out there that keep us awake at night as we look at the starry sky and wonder as we look out there, is there life elsewhere?” said Zurbuchen. Nestor Espinoza, an STSI astronomer, told AFP that previous exoplanet spectroscopy performed using existing instruments was very limited compared to what Webb could do. “It’s like being in a room that is very dark and you only have a small hole through which you can look,” he said of current technology. Now, with Webb, “You’ve opened a huge window, you can see all the little details.” © 2022 AFP
